If the Crucible Theatre is the cathedral of snooker, then David Vine was the High Priest of its television home, writes George Frew.

For a quarter of a century, Vine's filter-tip tones were the ones viewers listened to above the click of the cue ball, the soft, sweet roll of a colour into a pocket and the hushed awe of the assembled congregation.

To Vine, snooker has always been close to some kind of religion, the cruellest sport wherein a man must often watch his dreams sacrificed on the altar of a greater talent, and yet can only sit and wait for his opponent to commit the cardinal sin of missing a shot.

From his vantage point high up in the BBC commentary box, David Vine watched the great ones of the game meet triumph and disaster, their careers and characters forged in the Crucible's relentless, white-hot heat.

He was there in '82 when Hurricane Higgins wept tears of joy and pleaded for his baby to be brought to him after winning the World Championship. He witnessed Canadian Cliff Thorburn become the first player on television to achieve 147-perfection; and, as the hands of the clock crept towards midnight on an evening of high drama in 1985, David Vine was there to describe how Dennis Taylor finally nailed the myth of Steve Davis' invincibility, to a watching television audience of a scarcely-credible 18.5 million.

Wonderful memories, to be sure - yet the above are merely the briefest edited highlights of David Vine's 40 years in television and now, as he prepares to journey to Sydney to cover his final Olympic Games, the 65-year old broadcaster has decided the time has come to retire.

At his home near Henley-on-Thames, he looks back over the years with a mixture of wonder and gratitude.

He has, literally, travelled a long way from his days as a fledgling reporter on a newspaper in his native north Devon.

"I've been incredibly lucky," he muses. "I've travelled the world watching sport - I think at the last count I figured out that I'd worked in 42 countries. At one point, while we were doing the Superstars series, I was commuting to Florida every three weeks."

"But now I feel the time is right to call it a day. I think that's it. I started the snooker from nothing 25 years ago and the first year was a big gamble.

"I was asked to do it as a sort of off-the-cuff BBC man and it was a success from the word go. People say we don't get the audiences we did back in '85 when Taylor beat Davis, but then no one does anymore - there were only four channels then, now there's about 160!"

Vine has been married to his wife Mandy for 27 years and they have four grown-up children - Kim, Martin, Catherine and Christian.

Only his youngest son has a job involving sport - Christian works in the promotions department of the Williams Formula One team.

"I had a glorious time presenting Ski Sunday," he recalls. "I did it for 21 years and became great personal friends with people like Olympic champion Franz Klammer." It's a tribute to Vine's relaxed style that Ski Sunday was watched by people who'd never watched skiing in their lives. He also presented Miss World, A Question of Sport and even the Eurovision Song Contest.

The Frame Game, though, was always his greatest love, although he is as fluke-prone and frustrated as most when it comes to actually playing it.

"I'll never forget watching Cliff Thorburn making that first televised 147 break at the Crucible," he smiles. "He'd fluked the first red, but as he went on, we all looked at each other and said, 'This could be it' - and when he potted the final black, his fellow Candian big Bill Werbernuik rushed on and grabbed Cliff in a bear hug that almost dislocated his back!"

Werbernuik - the snooker player whose name is synonymous with 26 pints of prescribed lager - is another of Vine's great sporting chums.

Once, passing the giant Canadian's mobile home during a tournament, Vine was invited in for a drink. "I watched him go up to the tap with a pint glass and said, 'Hang on Bill - I don't wan't a glass of water', and he grinned and said 'Don't worry.' He'd rigged the trailer's water tanks up, so when he turned one on, out came - lager."

Stephen Hendry, he says, is the greatest snooker player ever- and with the Scotsman having seven world championships to his credit, this would be a hard opinion to dispute.This, he says, is a feat which will never be equalled.

Be that as it may, snooker players, like sports commentators, come and go. But in any case, this career has been a Vine romance . . .