Snooker Tam
Snooker Tam of the Cathcart Railway. By R. W. Campbell. 1919
One of the boys sent out by Maister M‘Harrie, ‘the super. o’ the line, was named Snooker Tam, on account of his nose, which was rather pointed. Snooker hailed from the Cowcaddens, where wife-beating is an industry and cadging is an art. But Snooker was a cut above the ‘close-mooth’ folks. He had always wanted to be a station-master and ‘blaw a whustle.’ As his father was alleged to be a ‘polisman,’ the ‘whustle’ instinct can be understood. The war gave Snooker his chance. Kirkbride provided him with a platform for his originality. The first thing he did on arriving at the station was to slip three round plumbers’ washers into the automatic machine and get three packets of chocolates. No flies on Snooker Tam!
R. W. Campbell’s Snooker Tam of the Cathcart Railway, first published by W. & R. Chambers in May 1919, is a humorous portrait of railway life in and around Glasgow during and immediately after the First World War. Written largely in Scots dialogue, the book follows the staff and passengers of the fictional Kirkbride station on the Cathcart Circle, using their quarrels, romances, rivalries and everyday mishaps to satirise suburban manners and railway life. Snooker itself plays no part in the story: this is not a book about the game.
Its significance to snooker history lies instead in the nickname of its young railwayman, Tam. Campbell explains it quite casually: the boy ‘was named Snooker Tam, on account of his nose, which was rather pointed’. The joke only works because snooker was already sufficiently familiar to Campbell and his readers to provide an immediately recognisable nickname. The game has therefore escaped the billiard room and entered popular language and fiction: Tam is not a snooker player, but a physical characteristic is enough to make him ‘Snooker Tam’. Published in 1919, the book provides a particularly charming early example of snooker leaving its mark on British popular culture.
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Snooker Tam of the Cathcart Railway. By R. W. Campbell. 1919