WHEN local sports business Hubble and Freeman was bought out three years ago director Peter Ludgate thought he may be able to put his feet up for a while.

But since then Peter, who stayed on to run the business for new owners Kookaburra of Australia, has found his feet haven’t touched the ground.

Hubbles, which included famous Teston cricket and hockey ball factory Alfred Reader as one arm of the business, retained its flagship sports equipment and clothing shop at the bottom of Gabriel’s Hill, Maidstone, and its long established snooker table suppling and renovating business, which has always been Peter’s pet project.

His reputation as Kent’s Mr Snooker spread far and wide over the 32 years he has been looking after the green baize of billiard table owners in homes all over the county.

In that time, Peter has worked for many rich and famous customers – he installed a table for Formula One racing world champion James Hunt shortly before his death – and often finds himself on a plane flying to some exotic corner of the world to do repairs or renovations to tables that have gone through the business.

He has just returned from a few weeks on Necker Island in the Caribbean where he was the guest of Sir Richard Branson for the sixth time.

Peter stayed at the tycoon’s luxury home while stripping his table back to the bare wood and completely renovating it.

He said: "Richard Branson is one of the nicest people you could ever meet. He is delightfully modest and genuine and has a real energy and a love for life.

"I started work on his snooker table at 5 to 5.30am every morning yet only once was I there before Richard, who runs his empire from a hammock, albeit surrounded by phones, faxes and email that hummed like angry bees.

"It took me 55 hours working on his table and we made up a shade canopy of bamboo found on the island."

Before his stint with the Virgin boss, Peter had just returned from Sotogrande in southern Spain where he had been flown out in a customer’s a private jet to install a white maple snooker table.

Before that he was in the north of the country installing five tables in a club in Javea, including a round orange table which caused a lot of interest among the locals.

Peter puts all his frantic workload, both at home and abroad, down to customer loyalty.

He said: "Having consolidated our operation back to one shop in Maidstone, one in Cheltenham and one in Kettering we have continued to enjoy the support of our loyal customer base.

"Our shop in Gabriels Hill is thriving and has not been adversely affected by the Fremlins Walk development and this is all because of the great reputation we have built up over the years.

"We get a lot of people coming into our shop from all over the county who used to shop at our satellites in Margate, Canterbury, Dover and Rochester who thought we had closed down.

"Hopefully, other old customers will read this article and realise that although we are smaller now, we are still serving the needs of sportsmen and women throughout Kent."