Get on to the blue!

It measures ten feet long by eight wide, has blue cloth - and there are no pockets.

The name of the game is carom, the original game from which billiards and later snooker developed. There are three balls, two white, one of them with a spot on it, and a red instead of the black as is used in billiards. The balls are 61.5mm in diameter, much larger than in snooker or billiards.

Originating in France in the 16th century, carom is an abbreviation of a longer word meaning cannon, which is the object of the game - to make cannon shots.

A player makes a cannon by hitting the object balls with the cue ball. But in professional carom, unlike in billiards, the cue ball has to hit three cushions during the shot. Each cannon is worth one point.

Carom is played in 46 countries, but not Britain. The nearest nations to us where the game is played are Belgium and Holland, though there was a carom tournament two years ago at Peterborough, the home town of billiards pro and the 1999 British carom champion Roxton Chapman.

He has been here in York during the UK Snooker Championship to demonstrate carom in the Cuezone tent at the Barbican Centre.

"This is the only table in Britain," he told me. "The carom table is specially heated underneath with three heating units to make it lightning fast.

"You can play different versions of the game but the pros play off three cushions and a good break is 15 cannons."

AN innocent slip of the tongue triggered a gem of Liverpudlian wit when some of the top players, snooker officials and snooker personalities were guests of the Lord Mayor of York, Coun Irene Waudby, at the Mansion House last week.

During his after dinner speed Mark Wildman, the former world billiards champion who recently stepped down as chairman of World Snooker, started to say that the prize money for the UK Championship winner was 100 mill....

He quickly corrected himself to say that in fact the cheque is for £100,000, but from the other end of the table up piped 1991 world champion John Parrott at the thought of those millions: "If I'd known that I wouldn't have lost in the second round!"

DANNY Potter, of Knavesmire Hotel, and Greg Bell, of The Junction, were this afternoon playing the final of the York pubs' pool challenge competition which World Sports Group have been running at the Cuezone during the Championships.

Winners from knockout competitions in eight York pubs have been in action this week at the Barbican Centre.

In the quarter-finals on Monday Brian Baxter (Burton Stone) beat Ian Strickland (Brigadier Gerard) 3-2, Potter beat Mark Nelson (Melbourne) 3-0, Bell beat Tim Fillingham (Half Moon) 3-2, and Andy Coop (Light Horseman) beat Russ Barrass (Rose and Crown) 3-0.

In Wednesday's semi-finals Potter beat Baxter 4-3 and Bell beat Coop 4-0.

All eight pub champions - Peter Stroughair won the Melbourne's competition but was unable to play in the final stages at the Barbican, so Mark Nelson took his place - receive signed snooker cues and the champion will gets tickets to tomorrow's UK final.

SOME people were confused by starting times printed on tickets and the times matches actually started, particularly during the early stages of the tournament.

The playing times were changed by World Snooker too late for the Barbican Centre to reprint tickets.

But the venue's snooker co-ordinator Leon Shouksmith said that slips with corrected times were inserted into tickets and every effort was made to telephone those who had tickets without amended times.

"Out of 8,000 tickets I know of only four people who arrived here who were not aware of the correct times of play," he said.

This afternoon's semi-final started at 1pm, as always scheduled, and not as printed in last night's Evening Press from information incorrectly supplied to us.

A BREAK of a totally different kind made Ronnie O'Sullivan turn and smile to the crowd while he was battling to beat Peter Ebdon on Thursday night.

Someone, he revealed yesterday, had broken wind.

Updated: 11:59 Saturday, December 15, 2001