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By Alan Fraser
Young, gifted and on the black: Alex Higgins, the Hurricane who blew exciting snooker into the homes of millionsBy the later years of his mercurial life he had become a sorry shadow of a ghost, seeking out free drinks and free bets and a new set of teeth which he was convinced would restore his bark as well as his bite.
Indeed, the last time I met him, in a Belfast pub a handful of years or so ago, his mind was alert and prompting interesting debate. Until the Guinness took effect, that is, after which he was taken over by a kind of pathos, and quickly became increasingly bitter and incoherent.
But in his prime I remember him as a magnificent sight, dancing round the table on tiptoe, a Fred Astaire of the green baize, holing 'impossible' long pots before long potting became de rigueur, a Hurricane always on the verge of being a tornado.
Alex Higgins put the flawed into flawed genius. Except that to describe Higgins as flawed only scratched the surface of his dark side. His snooker genius had a San Andreas fault running through it.
And so frequent and so destructive became the earthquakes that many in the snooker world simply gave up on him.
Towards the end, however, inspired by human decency and the freemasonery of the balk, the sport rallied round. Even Canadian world champion Cliff Thorburn, a long-time enemy and sparring partner (sometimes literally), was moved to warm embrace at a fund-raising function.
Only Higgins's fans, who got no closer than an auditorium or, more likely, their favourite television chair, remained utterly loyal, seemingly oblivious to his often grotesque behaviour.
Higgins was the people' s champion. He will always be the people's champion. Like George Best, that other flawed genius and slightly older contemporary from the harsh council housing estate life of Belfast, Higgins possessed a certain charm.
Unlike Best, who harmed mostly himself and alienated few, Higgins often betrayed an unsavoury bullying nature. Best disliked people who went around saying: "Do you know who I am?'
'Do you know who I am?" Higgins would ask menacingly of all manner of innocent folk just trying to do their job or their best.
Cue a new star: Alex Higgins in 1968, aged 19Of course, everyone knew who Higgins was. He was the man responsible for turning a smokefilled- dingy-back-room game into a popular television sport, at one crazy point second only to The Morecambe and Wise Show in the BBC ratings.
Higgins was that much-needed colourful character whose emergence happened to coincide with the advent of colour television.
Snooker suddenly made sense to the general viewing public when they could spot that the brown was behind the blue and the yellow was at the other end of the table from the pink. And in Higgins the TV audience latched on to a prince among the identical penguins in their dinner suits and black bowties.
'When Higgins came on the scene he had a style that set him apart from other professionals,' Clive Everton, the veteran BBC commentator and esteemed snooker historian, said.
World champion: Higgins with wife and baby in 1982'Players mixed occasional attack with canny defence. Higgins was more attacking, much more flamboyant.'
'A snooker revival needed a personality out of the ordinary for people to become attached to. That was Alex. And for good or ill, he did get snooker talked about and written about in both the sports pages and the news pages.'
His was a natural talent, as unique as it was inimitable. Quick of foot and eye, edgy, given to various nervous ticks and mannerisms, Higgins played with a spellbinding flourish.
And the closer he came to likely defeat, the better he played. He was often compared to the gunfighter with a solitary bullet in the firing chamber. The first of his two World Championship successes came in 1972, ironically prior to live television coverage and in the days when the event was spread over months and at different venues.
The winner's cheque was a paltry £480. At just 23, he became snooker's youngest champion.
A handful: Higgins with drink and cigaretteHiggins assumed the role of anti-hero - anti-Christ in some eyes - over the subsequent decade. It was 10 years before he won his second world title at a time when his game and life had been in decline.
That 1982 championship is doubly remembered in the annals of great Crucible moments.
There was that famous 69 which did for Jimmy White in the semi-final, a clearance Ronnie O'Sullivan later described as the 'most stupid' he ever saw. 'You watch it now and you just think how did he clear up from there?' O'Sullivan said.
There were, too, those oft-replayed emotional scenes after his victory in the final over Ray Reardon. 'Bring my baby,' he cried at the moment of triumph. 'Bring me my baby.'
A television audience of 14 million watched and ooh-aahed as 17-month-old Lauren was cradled in Daddy's arms. The next morning, Higgins appeared in front of a disciplinary panel of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. The governing body f ined him £1,000 for a number of misdemeanours including urinating in an ornamental flowerpot at the Crucible.
Bloodied: Higgins getting attention from the policeThe titles soon ran out. His last tournament success came in 1989 with the defeat of a young Stephen Hendry in the Irish Masters. But the bad behaviour continued. The head-butts, the assaults, the insults and the threats. In one particularly unsavoury incident he threatened to have fellow Irishman Dennis Taylor shot.
Snooker increasingly saw less of Dr Jekyll and more and more of Mr Hyde. Higgins had always possessed the apparently contradictory capacity both to be self-destructive and a born survivor. The first restricted his victories to far fewer than his ability merited; the latter extended his life, if not his career.
How else could he have got himself into such a state while lasting for so long? 'If he carries on like that he won't even make 30,' a snooker official said of the 24-year-old Higgins. Few thought it much of an exaggeration.
But Higgins reached 30, 40, 50 and even 60 while contending with throat cancer and all manner of ailments. When he attended the funeral of his mate and fellow rabble-rouser Oliver Reed, it was hard to determine which of the pair had died. That was in 1999.
A faded Higgins is ravaged by cancer in later life'Could you face life without snooker, Alex?' he was once asked. 'Could snooker face life without me?' Higgins replied.
Merely repeating the view of many an observer, Higgins said this year: 'I was the most natural, charismatic player who ever lifted a cue.'
Not a bad epitaph for someone I will always remember as an extraordinarily talented, damaged, paranoid, emotional wreck of a man.
source: dailymail
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