Alex Higgins

Winner of two world snooker titles whose mercurial talent did much to popularise the sport on television

Higgins, pictured in 1995, was disparaging of more recent world snooker champions, saying: ‘I had a much faster brain and was always several shots ahead, as if I had satnav round the table'
The snooker player Alex Higgins, who has died aged 61, led a life clouded by drunkenness, drug abuse, gambling, violence and tempestuous personal relationships. Yet for many of his fellow players and millions of fans, hooked on snooker with the advent of colour television, he will be forever viewed as a flawed sporting genius whose rock'n'roll lifestyle and brushes with officialdom made him all the more appealing, while a sometimes astonishing natural talent allowed him to brush aside more staid opponents and carried him to two world snooker titles. He was a man who would bet on virtually anything, and frequently did. His prodigious thirst for alcohol took him into more scrapes than he would ever be able to recall, while friends and enemies alike spoke of his volcanic temper, irrational outbursts and dark mood swings as he struggled, in his declining years, to cope with the ravages of throat cancer that had left him an emaciated figure living out his final days where he began, in the snooker halls and bars of Belfast. Yet most would prefer to remember Higgins as the one-time boy snooker hustler, nicknamed "Hurricane" because of the speed of his play, who became a sporting superstar. In his prime, whomever he might have been playing, he was able to command the spotlight in a manner no other snooker player has – Jimmy White and Ronnie O'Sullivan included. A waif-like figure, with his shirt left open-necked as he openly flouted the rules of the time that insisted bow ties should be worn, with a cigarette and strong drink invariably by his side, when Higgins began a break the nation seemed to collectively hold its breath in anticipation. Higgins, would sniff, twitch and fidget at the table, while careering around it with a near manic zeal, speed and an almost comic Chaplinesque gait. Yet, when he set himself to pot balls and build a break, no other player can have shown a greater natural aptitude, nor can any have taken more delight in the moment of victory. Like George Best, a contemporary Belfast wild boy, Higgins may never have understood how he achieved his brilliance, but his presence at a snooker table was often nothing short of mesmerising. Born in Belfast, Higgins grew up with three sisters in the staunchly Protestant Sandy Row neighbourhood in the south of the city. The son of a wheel tapper and a mother who augmented the family's meagre income by working as a cleaner, Higgins was a reasonable student at school. However, his life changed forever when he was 11 years old and began to visit The Jampot, a rundown snooker hall where he learned the rudiments of the game and began to earn money by challenging and beating his seniors. He recalled spending three or four hours every day after school practising and playing – and sometimes he missed school altogether. Soon, the prodigious nature of the young Higgins's talent became the talk of the community, even if he always seemed able to crank his game to another level as soon as a sizeable sidestake was up for grabs. Higgins always loved to gamble, and most of all on his own ability. The young Higgins had also cherished ambitions to become a jockey and went to England aged 14 to work for the Berkshire trainer Eddie Reavey. But he was unable to control his weight, lost his job having never ridden competitively, and returned to Belfast to pursue his love of snooker. By the time he was 16 years old, he had compiled his first maximum 147 break and, in 1968, confirmed a burgeoning talent by becoming the All Ireland and Northern Ireland amateur snooker champion. Professionally, snooker had long been dominated by figures such as Joe and Fred Davis, and John Pulman, while by the early 1970s John Spencer and Ray Reardon were the men to beat. Victory over Spencer in a challenge match – as ever, in Higgins matches, with a sizeable sidestake on the table – helped to prompt Higgins to turn professional. It was a decision that would be quickly vindicated when he became the 1972 World Snooker champion in a marathon final, played against Spencer at the Birmingham's Selly Oak British Legion Club, and making Higgins the youngest-ever champion at the time, aged just 22. For his 1972 success, Higgins earned £480, an insignificant sum when set against the estimated £4m he would earn throughout his career, but Higgins was beginning to announce himself to a wider public. To an ever-larger audience, coming to understand the sport through the BBC programme Pot Black, and through a proliferation of tournaments broadcast by BBC and ITV, Higgins was a totally different figure from the seemingly staid, besuited gentlemen with whom the sport had been synonymous. In constant demand to travel the country performing exhibitions when he was not involved in tournaments, Higgins did not have the playing consistency of rivals such as Reardon and, later, Steve Davis, but he was unquestionably the sport's biggest draw. As he made lightning fast breaks, performing brilliant trick shots and defeating all comers before sell-out crowds in working men's clubs across the country, often while consuming frightening quantities of alcohol, he captivated a new and altogether more raucous audience. He finished as runner-up to Reardon in the 1976 world championship and was once more defeated in the final four years later, by the Canadian Cliff Thorburn. The crowds willed another Higgins success, to the extent that Davis once reflected that he felt as though he was playing the crowd as well as Higgins, but it remained elusive until 1982, when he had begun styling himself as "the people's champion". After claiming the final frame of the final against his old rival Reardon to win 18-15 with a brilliant 135 clearance, the sight of a tearful Higgins embracing his second wife Lynn and their baby daughter became one of televised sport's most emotional and enduring images. Higgins was an inspiration to White, who became a close friend and was his playing partner when they won the World Doubles championship of 1984. Davis credited Higgins with snooker gaining pre-eminence as a television sport and once observed: "What people forget about Alex is that he had incredible bottle and fighting spirit. You watched him and wondered how he did it, with the way he played, but the public loved him and we all benefited as a result." Ronnie O'Sullivan, perhaps the player who comes closest to emulating Higgins in terms of style, was a boy of six when Higgins became world champion for a second time. While some would rank O'Sullivan as the greatest of all talents, he disagrees, saying: "Alex Higgins was one of the real inspirations behind me getting into snooker in the first place. He is a legend and should be remembered as the finest ever snooker player. The way he played at his best is the way I believe the game should be played. It was on the edge, keeping the crowd entertained and glued to the action." Statistics do not back up O'Sullivan's observations. Although Higgins was a five-time Irish professional champion and won 24 professional titles over a period of 19 years, including the 1983 UK Championship, the lack of prestigious "ranking" tournament successes beyond his 1982 win at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre suggest he was a lesser player than some of his contemporaries. But there is little doubt that a dissolute lifestyle contributed to his sometimes erratic form and to a long period of decline. He was in effect a spent force as a tournament player long before his time. He was twice married, first to Cara and then Lynn, with whom he had a daughter, Lauren, and son, Jordan. Both marriages were dissolved, and he is survived by the two children. Perhaps it was the breakup of his marriage to Lynn that prompted his decline. Lurid headlines accompanied their many disagreements, and Higgins had to recover from an overdose of sleeping tablets he took after a row while the couple had been on holiday in Majorca. The marriage came to an end in 1985, and Higgins's life seemingly began to unravel. In 1986, when asked to take a drugs test during the UK Championship, Higgins headbutted the official who made the request, which earned him a £12,000 fine and five-tournament ban as well as a court appearance, where he was handed a £250 fine for assault and criminal damage. Money worries were escalating as Higgins's gambling continued unchecked, and he was banned for an entire season after punching another official in the stomach in 1990 after losing a second-round match in the World Championship around the time he threatened to have his Northern Irish Catholic rival Dennis Taylor killed, saying: "I come from Shankill and you come from Coalisland, and the next time you are in Northern Ireland I will have you shot." As his form got worse, whenever he lost, Higgins would seem to search for an excuse in either the standard of refereeing, the table, the cloth, the temperature of the arena – anything other than an objective assessment of a decline that seemed more linked to his lifestyle. A heavy smoker since his youth, Higgins was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997. As the wins became ever more sporadic, despite attempts to return as a player, and the money he earned from exhibitions largely dried up, Higgins relied ever more on cash handouts from friends and strangers alike. Returning to Belfast, where he lived in sheltered accommodation close to his childhood home, Higgins endured years of cancer treatment, becoming a near-skeletal figure who would still attempt to hustle in snooker clubs for money and drinks. His teeth had fallen out, and he was reduced to living off baby food. But still he dreamed of making a comeback to competitive snooker, and managed to play in a recent legends tour organised by the promoter Barry Hearn. In one of his last interviews, Higgins had confessed to feeling suicidal over the past winter, but had not taken his own life because of the hurt it would have caused those around him. He had watched, but not enjoyed, this year's World Championship, describing it as "very predictable", and he added: "I think the difference between me and them is that I was a much quicker thinker. I had a much faster brain and was always several shots ahead, as if I had satnav around the table. I had such a quick evaluation, and that's why I had the speed." Taylor, the man Higgins would once have had shot, said: "Alex was unique. He did a lot for the game, playing the game differently from how anyone had seen before. What happened between us is water under the bridge. We made it up. He battled right to the end, and that is what he did in his entire snooker career." •  Alexander Gordon Higgins, snooker player, born 18 March 1949; found dead 24 July 2010