Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire
Billy the Kid is a young, up-and-coming snooker player. His manager, T.O. (The One), a compulsive gambler, falls into debt with psychopathic loanshark the Wednesday Man, who offers to cancel T.O's debt if he can arrange a 17-frame grudge snooker match between Billy and the reigning world champion Maxwell Randall (popularly known as the Green Baize Vampire).
To ensure that both players will agree to the match, T.O hires a journalist, Miss Sullivan, to stir up trouble between them. She interviews Billy and the Vampire separately, asks them leading questions intended to elicit angry responses and provoke enmity, then prints the results. The match is set.
Unknown to T.O., the Wednesday Man has hidden motives regarding the match. The sinister loanshark has engineered a clause in the game's legal documentation to the effect that the loser will agree to never play professional snooker again. Though the Vampire is close to retirement, Billy is young, and such a clause—if he loses—would greatly disadvantage him. T.O. only agrees when the Wednesday Man suggests that the Vampire will "not be at his best"; a clear insinuation that he will be bribed, or threatened. It is only later that T.O. discovers that this is a lie and that the Wednesday Man is plotting with the Vampire, hates both him and Billy, and wishes to see them suffer.
The match goes very badly for Billy, but when T.O. finally confesses, during a break, of his underhand dealings with the Wednesday Man (and the Vampire himself) he manages to pull himself together and eventually win the match.
psychedelic, satire