Duke Snook-em! Ulster music star "Freewheels" into pro snooker.

Ken Doherty - like a Duke without dreadlocks.
A bit of a curious story this morning.  The Belfast based singer, Duke Special, is to forsake his piano for the green baize.  The forty year old, whose real name is Peter Wilson, has joined the professional snooker circuit.

"I've long been an enthusiast for the game", said Wilson, "and over the past few months music has become less and less fun.  It's time to try something new".

The performer, best known for his album Songs From the Deep Forest and his energetic stage shows, is not new to snooker.  He was crowned Northern Ireland junior champion in 1988 and is still a dab hand with the cue.

"My top break in competitive matches is 135", confirmed the star from Dundonald, "and I regularly get 147s in practice".  The Duke hasn't ruled out a return to music however, "this is a change in direction, and I'm giving up music for a while, but not necessarily for good".

Watch out Mark Allen and Ronnie O'Sullivan!

Comments

Timothy Belmont said…
Best of luck to him; the more Ulster players, the better!
1 April 2011 at 08:47
K D Tennent said…
Inspirational. I'm thinking of giving up academia to break into the BDO Darts circuit. Still time to make it to Lakeside 2013!
1 April 2011 at 09:19
Owen Polley said…
See you in the final.
1 April 2011 at 09:45
Timothy Belmont said…
This isn't an April Fool, is it? ;-)
1 April 2011 at 12:51
Anonymous said…
Has to an April Fool. The man wouldn't have a minute with his performance schedule. But hey, he might just need a break ha ha
1 April 2011 at 14:24
Hernandez said…
I never thought this day would come.
2 April 2011 at 12:18
Owen Polley said…
Tim I'll confess. They're'll be No Cover Up.
3 April 2011 at 19:59
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Guest Post: Leave our Alain alone

By itwassammymcnallywhatdoneit As we know well in Northern Ireland, predicting someone’s views on a range of issues doesn't require a crystal ball, just a clue as to their background - their name, the school they attended or their address. Once you have sniffed out those details, you can identify their tribe and you can then have a fair stab at working out what they think. Of course, tribalism is not just confined to Ulster and tribal loyalties are not always that straightforward. Take Monsieur Alain Rolland for example, born and raised in Ireland but with a French father. For many Welsh rugby fans such continental lineage was proof positive of his preference for the land of his father, Wales's opponents in the rugby world cup semi-final and of course explains his 'outrageous' decision to send off the Welsh captain Sam Warburton. When England were knocked out of the world cup, by perhaps the bitterest of their many 'old enemies' France, Wales found the...
Read more

Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

Image
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retaine...
Read more