Ray Reardon, who has died aged 91 from cancer, was snooker’s world champion six times in the 1970s, the decade in which the game was changing from subterranean folk sport into a TV attraction.

Always immaculately dressed, a highly popular and genial ambassador for the game, ever adept at engaging a crowd, he remains the oldest champion and, on the strength of his 18-15 defeat by Alex Higgins at the age of 49 in 1982, its oldest finalist. After his wins in 1970, 1973-76 and 1978 he was still good enough to reach the 1985 semi-finals, when he was 52, before Steve Davis, the dominant figure of the 80s, trounced him 16-5.

As a player, he transformed himself from brilliant young potter into supreme tactician. In later life his deep knowledge of the game was utilised by Ronnie O’Sullivan, who acknowledged him as a significant factor in capturing the 2004 world title.

Commercially, Reardon’s peak came too early; prize money of £7,500 for winning the 1978 world title, £12,500 for reaching the 1982 final and £20,000 as a 1985 semi-finalist looks like petty cash by today’s standards, although it did not seem too bad in those days, particularly as the snooker revival had started from a low base.

Reardon was born into a snooker family, to Cynthia and Ben Reardon, in Tredegar, south Wales, where he attended Georgetown secondary school. His father, a coalminer, played in the local league for the Miners’ Institute, as did his uncles. When Ray was 14, and after a brief stint as a motor mechanic, he became a miner himself. On his 17th birthday, in 1949, he made his first century break in the morning and won the first of six consecutive Welsh amateur titles in the evening.

In 1956, the family moved to Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, in search of better job prospects. That same year he looked likely to become English amateur champion when he held a 7-3 overnight lead against Tommy Gordon in the final at Burroughes Hall in London, but his tip flew off with his first shot the next day, perhaps through the agency of a betting gang. Forced to play with an unfamiliar cue in those pre-superglue days, he lost 11-9.

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Eleven years in the pits ended in 1957 after he was buried in a roof fall at the Florence Colliery in Stoke, unable to move a muscle for three hours. “I had to breathe through my nose,” he was to recall, “because if I opened my mouth I’d suffocate to death on the dust.”

With iron self-control he kept calm by imagining he was playing endless games of marbles with his eight-year-old brother, Ron.

After that he became a police officer in Stoke, earning a commendation for bravery for disarming a man who was brandishing a shotgun, and another for crawling across a frosty rooftop to drop through a skylight on to an unsuspecting burglar.

In 1964 he achieved his ambition of winning the English amateur championship, beating John Spencer, himself to become a three times world champion, 11-8 in the final at the Central Hall, Birmingham.

A professional career was hardly worth contemplating at the time, as the World Snooker Championship had lain dormant from 1957 until 1964. But after selection for an amateur tour to South Africa he was offered a return visit as a professional and in 1967 took the plunge at the age of 35, in time for the revival of the championship tournament and the advent of BBC Two’s Pot Black. This was a half-hour, one-frame competition that he won twice (1969 and 1979) and that introduced the game and its leading players to new audiences.

Then the world championship ran throughout an entire season of week-long matches, and in 1970 Reardon became champion for the first time by beating John Pulman 37-33 at the Victoria Hall in London. At the City Exhibition Halls in Manchester in 1973, the first time the championship was telescoped into a fortnight, he recovered from 19-12 down to beat Spencer 23-22 in the semi-finals and from 7-0 down defeated Australia’s Eddie Charlton 38-32 to regain the title.

He retained it a year later comparatively uneventfully, but in the 1975 final in Melbourne, Australia, had to make an epic recovery from 29-23 adrift to beat Charlton 31-30. He disposed of the mercurial Higgins 27-16 in the 1976 final at Wythenshawe Forum in Manchester, and in 1978 became champion for the last time at the age of 45 with his 25-18 victory over the South African left-hander Perrie Mans at the Crucible theatre in Sheffield.

He retired to Brixham, Devon, in 1991, later moving to Torquay, but having kept up with contacts on the club scene that had given him his staple income in his early professional days, he continued with exhibitions as well as his summer tours of Pontins holiday camps, a routine he much preferred to the unpaid slog of qualifying competitions.

He is survived by his second wife, Carol Covington, whom he married in 1987, and by two children, Darren and Melanie, from his first marriage, to Susan Carter, in 1959, which ended in divorce.

• Snooker
• Wales
• Television
• BBC Two
• Staffordshire
• obituaries