DENNIS Taylor has blasted suggestions that he is heading for the snooker scrapheap.

The former world champion crashed out of this year's Embassy qualifiers at Blackpool last week.

And the popular Irishman was furious at coverage from Press Association chief sports writer Frank Malley, carried in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph.

Taylor was upset by comments implying that he had lost his spectator appeal. He also felt that Malley's piece had included personalised insults.

The world number 43 is still a prominent player as well as a top TV pundit.

And he recently won the World Trick Shot Championship in Belgium in front of an audience of almost 1,000, an event soon to be televised on Eurosport.

Taylor said: "I spoke to the reporter and he seemed perfectly pleasant.

"But I have since heard he has previously knocked the game of snooker.

"That wasn't knocking the game - it was knocking me. And that kind of reporting can do a lot of harm. I do not mind getting knocked if I have played badly.

"But I made a heck of a comeback to win four frames and then had a bad contact in the next frame.

"He said there were only 10 spectators but failed to mention that the cubicles at the Norbreck Castle only hold that many. The writer also said that snooker experts could tell the state of play by the colour of my face.

"Nobody has said that. I once said that during a game with Steve Davis he was getting whiter and whiter while I was getting redder and redder."

Taylor's next competitive action is in the Scottish Open in February.

And he continues to take a ken interest in the development of Accrington-based Ian McCullough, who practises as Taylor's Blackburn home.

And he is in action at the Dunkenhalgh on January 29, playing members of the audience and demonstrating his line-up of trick shots.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.