A ready wit has helped John Parrott, one of the most successful players of the past twenty years, to become a leading personality both on and off the table. John has won every major prize in Snooker apart from the big invitation events such as the Masters.

As a 12 year-old, John was an excellent bowls player but one wet day, his father took him into a snooker hall and the game took over from then on. He made a 129 break at 16 and in 1981 won the Pontins Junior championship having lost in the national under-16 final the year before.  In 1982 he was runner up in the national uner-19 event, losing to Neal Foulds in the final but went on to win the Pontins Open Championship and Junior Pot Black. After he took that latter title again in 1983 he turned professional having reached the final of the English Amateur championship in the meantime.

John made a dream start to his pro career reaching the semi-final of the Lada Classic and the last 16 of the World Championship. He beat some of the game’s top players and finished the season 20th in the rankings, already being spoken of as a future world champion. In his second season he reached the World quarter-finals and followed that with more quarter-finals and a UK semi-final in 1986. This combined with consistently reaching the last 16 at the Crucible, something which he achieved every year until 1996, saw him enter the top 16 for the 1987/88 season and he has remained there ever since.

That next season he reached his first ranking final losing out to Steve Davis 13-11 in the Mercantile Credit Classic. He also made it to two other ranking semi-finals and won the Pontins Professional Championship and was up to seventh in the rankings. 1988/89 proved to be his best season to date especially the second half. In January he reached the final of the B&H Masters at Wembley, losing to Stephen Hendry, and this was followed immediately by beating Terry Griffiths 9-8 to take his first ranking title, the European Open. He followed this with a semi-final in the British Open and then went on to reach the World final at Sheffield. There he put in a disappointing performance going down 18-3 to Steve Davis. The heaviest defeat anyone has suffered in a Crucible final.

Despite that defeat he was now the world number two and he retained his European Open title the next season with semi-finals in Dubai and at the Crucible. 1990/91 was another consistent season including a UK semi-final and he arrived at Sheffield for the Embassy fresh from achieving runner-up slot in the Irish Masters. He was better prepared than he had been two years earlier and after beating Steve Davis in the semis he comfortably beat the crowd’s favourite, Jimmy White, 18-11 to become World Champion as had been predicted many years before.

His first season as world champion could not have started better. He won the opening ranking event, The Dubai Classic and shortly afterwards, the UK Championship as well. He failed to successfully defend his world title but the next season he again won in Dubai but just failed to retain the UK title as well, losing in the final to Jimmy White. The 1994 Sky Sports International, 1995 Thailand Classic and 1996 European Open brought the number of his ranking titles to nine. The European Open has proved particularly rewarding for him as he has won it three times and been runner up twice (three times including one German Open). He also picked up the 1994 invitation event, the Malta Grand Prix and the 1998 German Masters but has not added to his ranking title in recent years.

The 2000/01 season was possibly John’s worst ever. He lost his opening match in all but three ranking events with the only bright spot being a semi-final in the Thailand Masters. He dropped out of the top 16 after a run of 14 seasons, falling to number 22. During the following season, although he got past his first match in all but two events, he still could not get beyond the last 32 and managed to climb back to 18^th.  He did perform better than some of his close rivals and his ‘one season’ points total meant that he would start the next season with a reasonable chance of getting his top-16 place back but in the event he lost his opened in all but two ranking tournaments and had to struggle to even hang on to his top 32 place dropping to his lowest ever ranking if 30th. Things looked to be on the up when he reached the LG Cup semi final the following season but he struggled again in most of the other events but managed to keep his place in the top 32 and will start the next campaign in a stronger position than a year earlier.

Helped by reaching the quarter final of the UK Championship he managed to climb a couple of places up the rankings in 2004/5 but in the following campaign he lost his opening match in four of the six ranking events and only won one match in each of the others with the result that he found himself in an all-time low 43^rd position at the end of the season. There were occasional glimpses of his old form over the next couple of seasons but he remained well outside the top 32

He is a lifelong Everton fan and a keen follower of horse racing. Nowadays he combines his snooker career with a highly successful television one. As one of the team captains in A Question of Sport, he brought a new dimension to that programme but has now decided to drop that role for the time being. With Steve Davis, he is a regular presenter of snooker coverage on BBC television and in assured of a career in this field when he finally put away his cue. He was awarded the MBE for his charitable work.