Clive Everton - Will the BBC renew his contract?

Here's what Daily Mail columnist Charles Sales says.

'Clive Everton, the voice of snooker, has been conspicuous by his absence from the BBC coverage of major games at this year's world championships, with former champion Dennis Taylor getting more air time.

Again, the celebrity-obsessed Beeb are ignoring the expert in favour of a name. Just as worrying, 70-year-young Everton's Beeb contract expires this year although the BBC insist Clive will be back in 2009'

Awwww, and it's a bad miss...

How in the name of fook did this columnist come to the conclusion that Dennis Taylor is just a (celebrity) "name"?

The rest of it just seems like the normal Mail faeces stirring.

As a non-snooker fan, it's only natural that I've never heard of Taylor. However, would a snooker fanatic be more likely to tune in because he was commentating? Genuine question.

He's a very well regarded and well known player - but as to whether it would make more people tune in I really couldn't say.

What nonsense!

I've watched lots of snooker so far this championships and heard just as much Clive Everton as usual. Two tables, three sessions a day for 17 days, that's an awful lot of frames to cover, and they seem to allocate one of either Clive, Willie Thorne or Dennis Taylor to each session, with John Virgo, Terry Griffiths or sometimes Neal Foulds or even (this evening) John Parrott in the box alongside. So there may be whole days go by with very little Clive, other days he'll be commentating virtually non-stop, it just depends on the rotas.

Sometimes I wonder if the Daily Mail's on the same planet as the rest of us...

I can't say I've noticed anything about the commentary or commentators - it's as it's always been!