Steve Davis: ‘I snuck my Spitting Image puppet into bed with my wife. Best night of her life’

Mocked for his heroic dullness, the snooker star has reinvented himself – as an experimental DJ. What’s behind this unlikely second act?

Back in the day, when superstar snooker player Steve “Interesting” Davis was regularly lampooned on Spitting Image for his heroic dullness, there was a story that he once snuck home his puppet’s life-sized Latex torso popped it into the marital bed, while his then-wife was in the ensuite.
“What happened when she pulled back the cover and slipped between the sheets?” I wonder aloud.
“Best night of her life, apparently,” Davis quips with deadpan precision. Boom-tish! As with snooker, it’s all in the timing.
There is something cheese-dream surreal about sitting in a sunny Bristol beer garden with the mild mannered bloke who bestrode his sport like a colossus during the 1980s – and remains a household name 40 years on. 
His musical partner, Gaz Williams, is here too. Williams, returning from the bar with pints of IPA, is a highly respected bass player who has played with Charlotte Church and Marc Almond. He’s a big deal in electronic music circles, with his own YouTube channel and podcast. He bears more than a passing resemblance to the cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz. Only, braver.
“With modular synths you have to be bold, you have to take risks,” he says with a grin. “It can leave you nearly crying with frustration but that’s all part of the journey.”
Davis won six world titles and was ranked number one in the world for seven consecutive seasons. He was declared BBC Sports Personality of the Year 1988 which, unkindly (stop sniggering at the back) led to an outcry on the grounds he didn’t have one. 
Davis still commentates for the BBC, but has now dramatically reinvented himself, first as an experimental club DJ, and now as a cutting-edge modular synth musician performing as part of a duo at Brecon Jazz Festival. In the Cathedral, no less. 
 “We are called Steve Davis and Gaz Williams,” he says. “I thought it was a name that really got to the essence of who we are.” That gag – delivered in a southeast London monotone – takes a few seconds to process but Davis is in no hurry. Dispassionate unflappability, even under the greatest pressure, has always been his trademark. 
“I’ve always lived in the moment. Strategising is just not my style; when you’re playing snooker you play the table. There’s no point playing to a certain person’s weakness, you have to play to your strengths, to respond to what’s happening immediately in front of you and stay optimistic that it will all work out in the end. It’s the same improvisational approach you need when you’re playing jazz.” 
Williams, 52, explains they will be headlining the Mindset stage in the Cathedral as a way of delving into and expanding the limits of what can be considered jazz. “Computers don’t belong on stage when they are pre-programmed or used for backing tracks,” he says. “Modular synths are unpredictable; we don’t know what’s going to happen.“ 
Quite so. I am still trying to understand any of this by returning to Davis’s origin story. Online footage of Davis DJ-ing at Glastonbury 2016 reveals an audience liberally sprinkled with both creepily realistic Steve Davis masks and baffled expressions as revellers try to reconcile his straight reputation with his avant garde musical taste. 
“They might come for the novelty but they’re dancing by the end,” he says. “They can’t help themselves; once they’re packed into that tent, Stockholm Syndrome takes over.”
If you hadn’t realised by now, Davis has a dry, verging on desiccated, sense of humour – so much so that comparisons with a once much-misunderstood Andy Murray spring to mind. 
Though 66, Davis barely seems to have aged in the past 20 years. Now divorced (with two adult children), he is still tall, still lean and although he’s long-since swapped the bow tie for a hipster T-shirt, still recognisably stiff. 
He moved from his home in Romford to Bristol last year, on account of the vibrant creative music scene. “I feel blessed, really fortunate that I’ve had two amazing hobbies and managed to make a career out of both of them,” he says. “All the while I was playing snooker I was really into music and collecting vinyl,” he says. 
For years he had a Monday night slot on Phoenix FM, a community radio station in Brentford. “It was a pretty out-there show on a Monday night from 10pm to 12pm,” he recalls. From that, came live DJing with another mate of his. 
“We weren’t so much wedding DJs, more divorce DJs,” he says lugubriously. “Our motto was ‘not there for the good times.’” 
Their playlist, according to Davis, was wilfully obscure European “bangers” but with the occasional familiar tune – Talking Heads, Killing Joke – to keep the crowd on side. Coverage on BBC iPlayer unexpectedly led to a 2016 Glastonbury billing and four years later came the excursion into synthesisers via the rabbit holes of YouTube. 
“During lockdown I started playing around with modular synthesisers, as a bit of a joke. I really enjoyed the challenge – it’s very esoteric.” 
Williams points out with genuine admiration: “He’s been a very fast learner. And we’re continuing on that upward curve together.”
Now, to readers feeling confused about the term “modular synth”, and perhaps irked that I haven’t explained what it is, I can only apologise. I’ve been procrastinating. 
Williams and Davis have shown me – and explained – their synths, but to my untrained eye the tangle of coloured wires and metal resembles one of those old-fashioned telephone junction boxes you find on the street. 
In some ways it’s easier to explain what modular synths are not; they are not Trio’s Da Da Da. They are also not Chris Lowe from The Pet Shop Boys sternly playing a keyboard in dark glasses.
Here goes: synthesisers can be divided into two camps. There are the fully digital press-a-button-and-it-all-works-for-you instruments that produce a largely homogeneous sound. And then there are the analogue modular synths, devoid of super-smart microchips but relying on older electronics to allow almost infinite possibilities because the way you use various coloured leads to connect – or “patch” – one module to another leads to endless avenues for experiment. 
“Each one is an entirely unique and, to a large extent, unpredictable instrument,” clarifies Davis. “You aren’t playing notes, you are steering the voltage through a load of cables. You never really know where you’re going but you do your best to make music that speaks to people. It’s a journey, an adventure into the unknown.” 
One piece, he says, will be an exploration of the tonality of Celtic and Welsh languages. “You just move within the music, adapting.” 
Of course, making modular, free expressionist jazz is not the only string to Davis’s bow. There’s the after-dinner circuit on which he’s found an equally singular niche.
“I call it de-motivational speaking because then nobody is disappointed,” he says. “You can feel quite bad when someone stands up to tell you how great they are and what they’ve achieved but when I wander on and confess I’ve never had a plan, well, everyone feels a bit better about themselves.” 
He has shrewdly learned to capitalise on his reputation, which would have irritated a more thin-skinned sportsman.
“Spitting Image was brilliant,” he says. “I think I was the first person in the world of sport to be on the show. It was an honour. They ripped me to pieces but in a really funny way.
“I came out of it with a nickname. I published a book. But presumably you want to know if I really am boring?” he drops his voice to a stage whisper as he confides. “Let’s just say there’s no smoke without fire.” 
He muses: “It’s amazing to think sometimes you have no control whatsoever over your image or how people perceive you – so you may as well just go with the flow.” 
It’s quite relaxing being around someone so successful – he shot to fame aged just 21 – who is also happy in his skin. Yes he’s self-deprecating, but that’s because he has nothing to prove.
Steve Davis and Gaz Williams play at the Brecon Jazz Festival on August 10. Info: mindsetstage.co.uk/tickets