Snooker: Old master and the new kids on the black

World Snooker Championship: Davis the durable one delighted to be a leading player again on his favourite stage

Upstairs at Soho's Groucho Club there is a small get-together with some of snooker's luminaries ahead of the current World Championship. Ronnie O'Sullivan, ciggie in corner of mouth, like it has taken root there, is promoting his "erotic lingerie" shop – "No, no, definitely more upmarket than Ann Summers," he scoffs – just round the corner. The discussion turns to bondage. "No, never tried it," sniffs O'Sullivan. "Wouldn't mind having a look at it, though."

Then Steve Davis wanders in and, like some maiden aunt who has got mislaid on the way to Betty's teashop in Harrogate, incongruously demands a cuppa. There is something gratifyingly old-fashioned about this fellow, whose pale, yet interesting (couldn't resist the word) features suggest that the world faintly amuses him. He is obsessed with tea, for a start. Pot for the former world champion still means something that contains a heavenly brew; not something you inhale to get there.

Davis nods at O'Sullivan, who hero-worshipped him as a young boy and, despite the passage of the years and the relative transference of status, still regards him with something approaching awe. They first met in a Chinese restaurant when Davis was dining out in Romford and an 11-year-old O'Sullivan happened to walk in with his father, Ronnie Snr. Davis was asked if O'Sullivan Jnr could be pictured with him.

"His dad told me he was only 11, but pretty good. Of course, you meet a thousand fathers who tell you that. I said [enthusiastically], 'You keep on playing then, sonny'. It's funny now to think back that this was probably the most naturally gifted player the game would ever see."

Tomorrow night, O'Sullivan's mentor is back at the Crucible to play in the first round of the "Embassy", the World Championship. You remind him that his domination of snooker in the Eighties spawned many wannabes such as O'Sullivan and his first-round opponent, Stephen Lee.

"A lot of players grew up on me and it's very hard to come to terms with that," agrees Davis, who is now 45 and a father of two. "They don't remember The Woodentops and Torchy The Battery Boy, but their fathers do. It's their dads who have got more in common with me. Look at Stephen. I'm old enough to be his father."

For all that the O'Sullivans, Hendrys and Ebdons have acquired his mantle in recent years, Davis remains a kind of deity within snooker. He may also just retain a capacity to defeat any opposition. "I'm looking forward to it more than I did throughout the whole of the Nineties," he says. "It's a totally different situation for me; I don't look over my shoulder at the chasing pack, I'm no longer trying to justify my existence with the new brigade, players like Stephen Hendry, and trying to hold back the years. I now arrive as an underdog, but somebody who's had a relatively successful season, having got back in the top 16."

Nevertheless, considering that Davis has won over £5 million in prize money in his career, has distinguished himself as a snooker pundit for the BBC and become a willing foil for Jonathan Ross and Rory McGrath on the same station'sThey Think It's All Over, it is tempting to contend, as he prepares to compete in this World Championship for the first time in three years, that there is nothing worse than the sportsman who fails to heed that familiar call: "Come on in former No 1, yer time's up."

"I do get quite a few people saying, 'You've retired, haven't you?'," says the six-time world champion. "Little do they know that I have played in eight ranking tournaments this season, and turned up at Blackpool in January for the qualifiers, which can be a graveyard for pros, and where there's 10 people watching your match against some young kid [Ryan Day was his opponent]. But I don't have anywhere near the desire in my bones to do anything else as I have to play snooker."

Still, you remind Davis that his maxim used to be, "I'll stop playing when I stop winning". Evidently, he was approaching that point. "I had more or less reached rock bottom," he recalls. "You try every-thing to reclaim your form. I thought, 'I'm getting older. Perhaps I'll try keep-fit'. Or, 'I'm nervous, I never used to be nervous. Well, some actors like a drink before a performance'.

"So I downed large scotches before a game. Or tried a 'lucky' route to the venue. Or not having sex on the night before a big match. Or trying different practice methods. Or trying homeopathy. But nothing really worked. I knew I was slowly declining and struggling. But was it just age or was it because it didn't matter as much to me?"

He answers his own question: "Yes, it did matter, but there was no point me worrying too much about it and completely failing anyway. So I reached the point where I almost thought to myself, 'Well, so what?' Then all of a sudden it turned round. And here I am, having my best season for five or six years.

"An 'as and when' approach to preparation has worked better than six hours a day of practice. Now I have an hour's practice, and if I don't feel happy, I go home. It may sound to you that I don't care; what I'm really saying is that I don't care as much as I used to."

Away from the table, Davis's metamorphosis from the Romford Robot, that character once perceived as driven and introspective, into a popular feature of the irreverent They Think It's All Over has been a revelation. "I love it, and all I have to do is to play up to my image as the guy who's got a bus-ticket collection," he says.

He also reminds you, with typical dry self-deprecation, that he is a winner of the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year. "And," he adds with mock gravitas, "runner-up twice. I've been in the top three more than anyone else, apparently. That's quite funny when you think I have got the tag of being one of the country's most boring people."

He confesses there is an anoraky side to him. His fascination is soul records. "I have a vinyl addiction," he says. "It's my only vice, apart from poker." He has participated in the Poker Million television series. "Jimmy White won it, $150,000; I came fifth and got $30,000. What a great thrill. It's the sport, rather than the gambling, that appeals; your wits against somebody else's."

But it is snooker that remains his first love. It is the sport that created him, and the sport that has been so enhanced by his presence. Steve "Durable" Davis needs no kind of bondage to ensure that continues to be the case.