Shaun Murphy today admitted that his foray into the music industry had been a ‘big mistake’ after hearing the news his single had debuted at 349 in the charts. The cover of the Chas & Dave classic ‘Snooker Loopy’ was rushed out last week after he knocked out Paul Robertson to reach the final of the World Championship for a second time.

In a twist to the original song, the video shows Shaun being betrayed by his wife and crucified by a naked John Virgo. Bearing chalky palms and a triangle on his head, Murphy breaks free from his crucifix (made of two snooker cues) and dashes across the studio to the final where he completes the first ever 18-0 victory. He then makes love to his estranged wife on the table in front of a cheering crowd.

The video unfortunately did not prove an inspiration as John Higgins crushed Murphy in the real final 18-9 last night. Rumours that Murphy may be on the verge of a complete breakdown increased after Steve Davis reportedly witnessed him ’shitting on a Bible’ in his dressing room after the match.

Snooker is in crisis today as a disagreement between Willie Thorne and the World Snooker Association could leave the game with a shortage of blue balls.

Thorne, through his majority share holding in Thorne Corp., controls the worlds only source of blue snooker balls; a snooker ball mine under a secret active volcano, somewhere in South America.

World Snooker are refusing to pay more than their fixed flat ball rate for the blues, whilst Willie has publicly stated that this price doesn’t reflect their rarity and difficulty in mining, properties he claims are unique to the blue ball.

With the crisis threatening postponement of the World Championships, top snooker personalities have been eager to suggest solutions.

“We get a strange silvery grey coloured ball out of our mine,” says Steve Davis, chairman of Nugget Mining PLC. “We’d be happy to let World Snooker use that as a replacement. We normally just sell them to Russia, they use them to fuel submarines or something”.

John Virgo is also in favour of the grey ball solution, “It would be a nice bit of nostalgia, a throwback to when we used to watch the game in black and white”.

However, some traditionalists are dead against a new colour, “The blue is a key ball on the run down from brown to pink. It wouldn’t be the same” complains John Parrot.