Hurricane's force leaves lasting memories

Even as the world championships begin in Sheffield this week, the tacit message in The Alex Higgins Story seemed to be that snooker's epic age has passed. The consensus was the game of whispers was at its most lordly in the brief period between the Falkland's invasion and the Scargill strikes.

Higgins' emotional embrace with his child and wife Lynn after his improbable 1982 world championship win has become not just the definitive image of the man but also an unmistakable expression of the time. As Eamon McCann reflected with exuberance, there was something comforting about watching Higgins "from the Bogside in Derry and you sort of knew that it was okay, that Alex was winning".

The Derry commentator observed that in those few seconds when he had his family around him and was - for the last time - operating at the full capacity of his genius, you could see it had all fallen into place for Higgins, if only for an instant.

Almost all the great cue men of the last three decades were there to agree that Higgins had a genius and a flair for snooker that will remain untouchable. His nemesis, Steve Davis, depicted then as the priggish front of snooker's establishment, was the warmest in his remarks, the rival who seemed most in awe of what Higgins used do in his prime.

Barry Hearn described Davis as "the serial trophy killer". Winning was what he did. For Higgins, the aesthetic was always paramount. Davis knew this. The man we knew as "Mr Interesting" had clear recall of a Higgins clearance in 1982, visualising and describing every shot before declaring it was "the greatest ever clearance you are ever likely to see".

In 1983, Davis was 7-0 up against his rival in the UK championship when, as he put it: "Alex decided he would try and I still remember sitting squirming in my seat." Higgins won the final 16-15.

But those were the high points of a sporting life that in retrospect was one long and spectacularly lurid fall from grace punctuated with isolated cue strokes of brilliance. Higgins not only hit the skids, he trashed them. Drink was, of course, involved, facilitating an endless catalogue of adventures that were more often than not recorded in the London tabloids.

A macabre humour underpinned most of them. Pat Hammond, Alex's downstairs neighbour for a time, was watching her television when the snooker star plummeted past her window, on his way to completing a tumble from his second-floor apartment. Even as she made her way out to assist him, a policeman appeared and wondered aloud if the player was dead. Higgins looked up and said: "No, but I bet you wish I was." He was back playing competitive snooker within the fortnight, hobbling to the table on crutches.

Even Dennis Taylor, whom Higgins threatened to have shot and also apparently graphically insulted a member of his family, spoke of his old rival with something resembling affection. They met in a tournament final shortly after Higgins' outrageous threat and Taylor was too dignified a man not to shake his hand.

In the early frames, Taylor was forced to watch a Higgins exhibition. After an audacious clearance, Higgins sent the black ball cannoning around the table and stood with his arms aloft at the pocket that the black eventually fell into. He was, as Taylor noted, executing a humiliation.

Higgins, naturally, lost the match because of his temperament. His constant hunger for the shot that would make the crowd draw breath meant he lost many more games than he ought.

But it was that showmanship that made his opponents rich. It was Higgins' very recklessness that established snooker as a premium television sport and although contemporary observers claimed to be appalled at his volatile behaviour, the public was addicted to Higgins.

The BBC was well aware of that and perhaps that is why it wrongly kept the cameras on the player for those dark minutes when he sat slumped in the crucible after losing to a journey-man pro. The match was over; most people had left the auditorium and the referee had almost put all the balls back in the case. To show Higgins, the man who made the game, gasping for air was not sport or even television, it was just a crass invasion of privacy.

The Hurricane would, of course, leave the room, belt an official and then, slurring, tell the assembled press: "You can shove your snooker up you jacksie, cos I won't be playing again."

And he didn't, or at least not with any meaning. His last Crucible appearance was a first-round loss to Ken Doherty in 1994. The man himself did not contribute to the making of the film but appeared to give it his blessing by allowing himself to be filmed in a pub watching racing, forlornly cheering, "Go on the Queen's horse, go on the Queen's horse."

Maybe Higgins said nothing because he knew there was nothing to say. Although the invitation was to sigh at the sight of an ailing master fighting old torments, that was not the inclination. For all his vulnerability and emotion, Higgins has always had a survivor's core. Excess was his choice, his life statement, his way of giving.

This documentary was framed as an obituary and from a snooker perspective, it was probably timely. The man who stretched the imagination of the sport has long since finished as a player and the pale percentage boys who are in the Crucible today are, by and large, the practitioners of a smaller, less important game.