Taylor and Thorne on TV
The snooker season may be over for another year, but two of the professional game's leading commentators have been gracing television screens in the UK.
Dennis Taylor and Willie Thorne have both previously taken part in the popular, 'Strictly Come Dancing'. For Taylor, it was more salads and rhubarb than samba and rumba as he appeared on the latest series of Celebrity Masterchef.
The 1985 world snooker champion, was up against weathergirl, Sian Lloyd and former Coronation Street star, Shobna Gulati with a place in the quarter-final up for grabs.
In his opening interview, Dennis joked that he would be making an "Irish Mixed-Grill of boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, roast potatoes with chips".
Luckily for presenters and judges, Gregg Wallace and John Torode, he was joking although his menu of Irish Stew served with mashed potatoes was no laughing matter.
"The mash is lumpy" complained Torode, and the stew needed "something more" summed up Wallace.
A dessert of poached pears and honeyed cream proved more popular and meant Dennis was still in with a shout after round one.
In round two, the contestants were sent to the busy Howard dining room, in central London, serving modern british cuisine under the critical eye of Brian Spark.
Taylor was put in charge of a complicated sounding 'Sea Bream with coco beans and lardons served with a lemon compote'.
Despite struggling with the pace of the service, the popular Irishman came through and even looked like he was beginning to enjoy the challenge. At the end he said "that was tougher than I thought it would be. I think I deserve a drink!"
Lunch over and back to the studio for the final round, Taylor chose to 'play it safe' with a starter of Chicken liver salad and a main course of Salmon served on a bed of spinach salsa.
"The salmon could have been cooked by a professional". High praise indeed from Torode and surely the highlight of the show for Taylor.
Unfortunately, we won't be seeing him in the quarter-final, but all in all, we think that 60-year-old Dennis did great, especially considering he has only just starting cooking!
We are guessing that despite following Taylor's lead onto the dance floor, Mr. Thorne will not be appearing on Masterchef anytime soon.
During his appearance on BBC's Celebrity Mr & Mrs, with his wife Jill, he admitted that he "didn't do kitchens" and that "it took him two years before he knew they had a dishwasher".
The Thorne's faced opposition from Eastenders' actress, Rita Simons and Jimmy Osmond and their 'significant others'.
Playing to raise money for the Rainbow hospice in Leicester, of which he is a patron, Willie and Jill had to match answers to a succession of questions about each other.
They only got two questions wrong out of ten, but that was enough to eliminate them from the contest, leaving Simons to go and win the £30,000 first prize for her chosen charity.
Taylor and Thorne are leading the way when it comes to snooker players doing non-snooker related things on TV. Tell us which snooker celeb you would like to see doing something different on TV and what...here
