THEY have come to hang on to his coattails, to watch every nervous tic and twitch, to buy into the legend of the Hurricane. In their eyes they have come to watch the best ball player in the history of the game of snooker, the rebel, the most self destructive personality of his generation.

They have come to see him play or not turn up or explode in frustration or to fall over drunk or to cause a scene. They have come to watch him rifle colours into pockets with venomous aggression, to set the cue ball line-dancing along the baize. They have come to watch his dalliance with snooker's implausible shots, his high tempo, `bollox to the lot of you', impetuous game.

They have come to watch a man who has come to know safety as making a million pounds and squandering it, going for an outrageous black when the yellow is on, a man who moves around a snooker table like a cat on a hot stove, crackling with and dissipating the energy of a power station. Held together by the hype.

Two thousand three hundred people have come the Waterfront Hall, Belfast to watch, maybe for the last time, his elemental charisma, his unfocused, bewildered state. They have come to contemplate his scarred life, his solo run on the anti-establishment ticket.

They have come to doff their hats and scatter petals and chant his name. They have come to take him whatever way he presents himself. They know Higgins would never have made it in the bonhomie-Pringle-jumpered world of A Question Of Sport. They know that he could never have advertised crisps and fizzy drinks or demonstrated road safety for children. Higgins has always been the real thing, often startling, sometimes shocking. Belfast people have come to give a little bit back because he has asked them. A testimonial for a world champion. They have come to pay homage and to give him their money.

It's 7.50 pm. and the match against current world champion Ken Doherty was scheduled to have started 20 minutes ago. Referee Len Ganley, `The Lurgan Chimney Sweep' stands by the table, a solitary figure banging off warnings to the flash camera mob. Ganley would have issued the same warnings a thousand times over his 20 year career as a professional referee. He surely realises now that no one listens. The balls are set. But Alex is still in the Europa Hotel. The Hurricane isn't ready to blow. No one is concerned. At 48 why would Alex Higgins change a lifetime habit? The bars are still buzzing in the Waterfront.

"What's Alex going to do, mate?" a father asks his Mars Bar and Coke laden son.

"He's gonna whirlwind."

"What's he gonna do when he whirlwinds?" asks the father.

"One-four-seven," says the son, "one- four-seven."

The lights dim and `Big Joe Swail: The-Next-One-To-Bring-Back-The-Bacon-To-Belfast' is introduced. Doherty emerges dapper, cleancut and corporate. A fit-for-the-family world champion.

"Because he has fallen on hard times I thought it would be a nice gesture to do something about it. I thought I'd give him the opportunity to make a start. He had that charisma around the table and that's why people loved to watch him play," says Doherty.

If the current champion's manager Ian Doyle had been listened to by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) in the l980s, the Dubliner might never have met Higgins for the first match of his testimonial year. It was Doyle, along with match referee Ian Street, who once called for Higgins to be banned for life.

In 1985, when Doherty was 12 years old, Higgins told a sceptical world that he had cleaned up his act. "I have renounced the devil," he declared. In 1991, playing a game in Preston, Higgins pulled his young opponent, Stephen Hendry, aside and whispered into the lad's ear. "Hello," said the former world champion. "I am the Devil."

Higgins has frequently attracted a painful type of attention, much of it warranted. For 20 years the vultures have circled and now the carcass has been picked clean. Even people who purport to know him are not sure quite what he has being doing with his life for the past number of years.

But there are pointers, and the testimonial is the most positive of them all. Higgins is at a new low ebb because his dimming talent can no longer promise an emergency rescue. Too many lost weekends. Too much manager, wife, substance and fan abuse. Too many unkept promises, most of them to himself.

He has been declared bankrupt, fined numerous times and threatened with imprisonment. He has threatened to have fellow Belfast player Dennis Taylor shot, physically assaulted snooker officials and broken the windows of his former wife's home.

He has been banned from a number of clubs and in 1990-91 was banned for the entire season after accusations of actual assault on a WPBSA press officer and verbal assault on WPBSA chairman John Spencer. He was ignored by snooker's expansion into America and the Far East, has admitted taking cocaine and cannabis and is known to have a chronic alcohol problem. He also contemplated suicide.

In 1990 Barry Hearn, manager of Steve Davis, said: "I've been waiting for Higgins to be destroyed for years. He looks worse and worse. There's nothing on him. But the fact is people like watching the process. This is what I think is one of the biggest things in the game.

The ageing Higgins has in recent weeks been photographed coming out of his residence, a caravan parked in the garden of a friend's house. More recently, he took on punters for £5 a game in a Dublin snooker hall. According to Doyle, Higgins, over the years, may have squandered up to £2 million.

He walks into the auditorium in a dark waistcoat, shirt and trousers and an in-your-face white jacket. A black handkerchief peeps out of the breast pocket. He is carrying a towel and looks older, but not unhealthy. He pulls a strained smile across his persecuted face and raises his hand. The crowd errupts. Higgins has passed his first test of the night. He has arrived.

It is the biggest crowd Doherty has ever played before, including those at The Crucible and the Irish Masters at Goffs. The Waterfront could house both venues. His first shot puts the white into the corner pocket. His second shot and the white finds the opposite pocket. Higgins turns his back on the table and watches Doherty on the TV monitor, flicking his legs, picking his clothes, sipping his beer.

The crowd know the plot. They don't care. The world champion will win, certainly, and in the best of nine frames. It will probably go to 4-4. It does. Higgins makes a break of 101 in the sixth before attempting a high velocity and quite outrageous cut on the black. He takes the frame but Doherty comes back to win 5-4.

Much like Ascot really. The Norfolk Stakes runner-up, Hopping Higgins, owned by a Niall Quinn-led syndicate, was named after the snooker player. Higgins fell out of the second floor window of his girlfriend's flat in 1988, but went on to win the Irish Masters. According to Quinn, the filly was named after the snooker player because she could win even with a broken leg.

"I was a bit ring rusty. This is very hard for me. The Irish people have a certain affinity for myself. It is very heart warming. They like the way l do it. I want to play for another three or four years. Steve Davis is on the slide. I want to get back up there," says Higgins.

Ganley has his doubts. "To make it back he would have to become an exceptional player within the year. Don't forget, Alex Higgins is ranked down in the hundreds. It's very hard to get back. It's a big, big step forward. I don't think at 48 he'll be able to do that."

Ganley knows the lie of the modern snooker landscape. Doherty won only one ranking tournament in his seven years as a professional until he learned how to twist the knife in this year's Crucible victory.

"Alex is approaching 50. Ken is 24. In the early years the magic that came out of Alex Higgins was of a different class. Players came into the game and played as natural players, but not to his level.

"He made a break of 69 in the semi-finals against Jimmy White to go into the World Championship final in `82. That was a different class. He took four reds off the side cushion to make that break."

The crowd swamp the arena. But the cameras get first bite of Alex. Tables are ordered at the bottom of the aisles for autographs. Higgins looks as comfortable as a Christian Brother in Ibrox Park. He has a candlewax complexion and in the strong light his eyes are bleached grey as he faces the BBC.

"The 101 break was a big pocket. It was quite easy. I had some chances early on

`The People's Champion' is ushered away from the people. Through the doors with his cue and towel and glass of wine and minder.

We follow him into the warren of walk ways and tunnels back to the changing room area. He's smiling and upbeat. Stress free. An unusually relaxed Alex Higgins. The children, Jordan and Lauren, whom he emotionally swept up into his arms after his victory in 1982, his father, friends, alleged friends, old pals, very good friends, lifelong friends, long lost friends, relations and in-laws mass into the changing room. He welcomes all of them.

"A brief few words Alex?" ventures a reporter.

"Give me a few minutes to freshen up lads," he replies.

Higgins disappears. Party noises and chatter flood out with the occasional opening of the door. Outside in the auditorium, Doherty is signing autographs. The compere finally announces to the fans that Alex has had to leave the building because of family reasons. Doherty stays on for almost an hour.

That is how far snooker has moved on or, rather, how much `The Hurricane' has blown out.

Role models have replaced reactionaries, but Higgins still plays by the same rules. When Alex was fire and brimstone on the baize, in came strategies and defensive plays to upset flair. When Alex smoked, and drank three fingers of vodka in a gulp during matches, in came physical fitness routines and sparkling water. When Alex went A.W.O.L., the new lads behaved like fiance's paying their first visit to their future mother-in-law's house. When Alex railed against clean living, corporate identity and prime time, the new lads mopped up the endorsements.

They say Alex got 50 grand, Ken did it for nothing. That's about twice the prize money Higgins got for his two World Championship wins, £25,000 in 1982 and £450 in 1972.

The real fear now is that his decline may reach its inevitable conclusion in an atmosphere of predictable melodrama. The price for his early days of genius is that he cannot now escape himself. They cannot put people like Higgins out to graze like an ageing war horse. He cannot trade in his gifts for a bland, trouble free life. Nor would he ever want to.

How long the money will last has been a source of some debate for everyone, that is, except for Alex Higgins.