The Players: Alex Higgins

‘Mind how you go, son; the last fella to try and interview Alex Higgins was from the Sunday Life. Your man went down to the Winning Post bar in Bangor, and found him pissed in the bookies next door. Higgy wrote down the number plate of the reporter’s car and threatened to have him whacked by a UDA hit squad. Believe me, he knows the people who can do it.

‘Word on the street now is that Higgins has gone back to where he came from – like a wild animal returning home to die. In his case that’s Sandy Row, south Belfast. Check The Royal pub, but don’t hang about. You’ll be okay. The pavements are painted red, white and blue in that part of town. But are you really sure you want the grief?’

Belfast, May 2005. I’m taking last-minute advice from friend Jim McDowell, editor of Belfast’s Sunday World newspaper. McDowell is a hard-nosed Ulsterman who knows his city from the sewer upwards. But these days, even Big Jim isn’t sure exactly where to find the former ‘People’s Champion’, renowned playboy and gambling legend that is Alexander Gordon ‘Hurricane’ Higgins.

With good reason. Higgins, now banned from virtually every hotel in the country and flitting between temporary accommodation, changes address like he switches mobile numbers; every couple of weeks. Depending on whom you believe, the snooker legend has either drunk his cancer into remission, is wasting away with an incurable disease in a caravan, or about to make a last, grand comeback on the baize. But one thing is certain: his hatred of journalists remains unswervingly in direct opposition to his love of gambling. So will he take a punt with InsideEdge?

Rack ’em up

The Royal in Sandy Row is like most pubs in urban, protestant Belfast: hard men in shellsuits drink Guinness in silence, At The Races is on the TV and you don’t mess. Massive ‘UDAUFF welcomes you to South Belfast’ graffiti on the wall outside suggests why. I start talking with the barman, a fan of InsideEdge, it soon turns out. Everyone at the bar earwigs our conversation, and start animatedly talking horses. An old bloke, ashen faced, drinking halves of lager in the corner looks over. It’s Alec ‘Sandy’ Higgins, Higgy’s father. They haven’t spoken for years.

‘Higgy’s an ignorant cunt,’ offers the barman, as the pub nods silently in agreement. ‘But if you give him some money, he’ll fucking love you.’

Things start to look up. A weathered bloke with a broken nose offers to take my business card and give it to Higgins, who is ‘probably in the bookies.’ Two races from Leopardstown later, the mobile rings. A rasping, engaging voice starts up. Surprisingly, it’s the voice of the man who helped to transform snooker from back-room pursuit to the televisual sports phenomenon and global betting banquet it is today.

Break

‘Mr Fowler,’ starts Higgins, in an ironically posh voice, ‘you’ve used tabloid tactics to hunt me down in my local pub. That is despicable! And you haven’t come all the way from England for the good of your health, have you? I’ll talk, but it will cost you £1,500.’

‘I only want to talk about horses and gambling,’ I protest. ‘I don’t care about sex, drugs or booze. And £150’s your lot.’

‘Mmm,’ considers Higgins. ‘You’re a gambling man. £500!’

‘£200,’ I insist.

‘Deal.’ He hangs up. A huge bloke with a limp handshake bowls up within minutes and makes me sign a ‘contract’. It’s written in pencil on the back of a betting slip.

We walk down Great Victoria Street to the Royal Navy Club. Suddenly, Higgins materialises from nowhere. It’s clear from the grin on his face that he’s enjoyed the element of surprise. He’s thin, drawn, but still self-consciously dapper in a scarf and trilby. Even better, his spirits are up. He strolls grinning into the club and directs us into a snooker room at the back. No-one bothers us. It’s as if he really is invisible. There he flicks on the light and insists on giving me a lesson, whether I like it or not.

‘I’m not much of a snooker player,’ I admit, potting a red, but nervously screwing a blue wide of the pocket.

‘I can fucking see that,’ laughs Higgy, walking round the table. He yanks my low-flying zip up in a flash of his right hand. ‘Look at the state of you!’ And so the lesson-interview begins. I spread my feet, lower the cue and listen. He laughs, sips a mineral water and talks.

Potting the red

‘The most exhilarating matches I ever had were with Jimmy (White),’ rasps Higgins, putting on his glasses to play a perfect long-range pot. ‘He was the Ronnie O’Sullivan of his day. I remember in that semi-final (the 1982 World Championship semi-final, which Higgins narrowly won, and was possibly the best match of snooker ever played) I produced the best break I’ve ever made (an essential 59 in the final frame) – probably the best break anybody has ever made in the circumstances.

‘I also played a bloke called Neville Walsh for money in the early 1970s in Australia. Not many people know this. I gave him a 35 start. It doesn’t seem much, but the agreement was I could only pot reds and yellows. I managed to get 11 reds and 11 yellows consecutively. That was some performance. And we weren’t using the balls they use today. And the tables were cut tighter, back then.

‘I never challenge people, I wait until they challenge me…’ Higgins pauses and looks me squarely in the eye to make sure I’ve got this clear. Maybe he expects me to play him for money… who knows? I concentrate on chalking my cue and Higgins eventually gets on with the match.

‘I used to play (1970s sparring partner) Graham Miles in Birmingham,’ he continues. ‘I’d play him for a grand – but it wasn’t really him I was playing, it was his backers. And they wouldn’t even come back for a return match. A lot of them are bullshitters. Like (he names a player and backer IE can’t identify for legal reasons). You played a shot and they did everything they could to stop you from winning. They were really bad sports.’

‘So what about the money in snooker in the early days?’ I ask. Surely, up to the time of breakthrough TV show Pot Black, Higgy was making more from betting on himself than he was winning in prize money?

‘You could say that! In the 1970s, I was the only player putting money on myself,’ laughs Higgins. ‘Most of the other players were backed by someone. It’s okay to play and get a percentage, but it tells you a lot more about yourself when you’re playing with your own money. It seemed to stand me in good stead in tricky situations like the matches against Jimmy, anyway.’

Sinking the black

We pause from the match for a few minutes. Higgins accepts my offer of a Guinness (‘just the one’) between frames and stands back at a small table to roll himself a cigarette. After supposedly beating cancer, God only knows what his doctor would make of that, but he doesn’t care. In his own mind he’s indestructible. Bloody hell, with that kind of optimism, what must he have been like trackside, when he was placing seriously fat bets?

‘Well, I love a bet,’ admits Higgins, in the most unstartling admission of the afternoon. ‘But I couldn’t bet on things I can’t watch, though, like greyhound racing. I don’t do spread betting, football or who’s going to be the next Pope. I don’t go to casinos. I don’t like sitting down. I’ve got ants in my pants!

‘Contrary to what people have said,’ he continues, picking up the cue again, ‘I’ve never been a ridiculous punter. My biggest ever punt was in Australia. I loved going racing there; it’s so civilised. My ex-wife is Australian and her father was a racehorse trainer. He even trained a Sydney Cup winner. Rosehill Gardens (in Sydney) is probably my favourite course in the world. I had $8,000, which I screwed there one time on a single horse. Don’t forget, I used to be an apprentice jockey before I was a snooker player, so I love horses. When you see some of the classy horses, flat or jump, they really are exquisite. Athletes really are pretty mundane compared with horses. A jockey and horse in unison is a work of art. Obviously, we’re all mugs for punting. I wouldn’t say it’s in our genes, but don’t forget that racing is the sport of kings and queens – it’s passed on to us by nobility.

‘My biggest ever winner was in Australia as well,’ he adds, slotting another couple of balls. ‘I won $46,000 in an afternoon on the horses. It must have been the early 1970s, so that was a decent amount. The money wasn’t very big in snooker then – my first championship winnings were only £480. Back then you did it for the love, really. Anyway, I went to the races with $2,000, and kept losing. Then I tried to do a Trifecta on a 24-horse with the Tote, but they wouldn’t have any of it, so I put two lots of $50 on the roughies. That’s what they call the outsiders out there. I got 58/1. I was a young pup of 24, sitting down with a beer and a whisky when the result came in. I had another four winners that day, and figured life couldn’t get any better.’

Foul – four away

So how much has he actually burned at the bookies? We raised the subject of Higgy’s betting turnover recently with Willie Thorne at the Crucible. Big Willie laughed politely and said he’d hate to guess – before admitting openly he’d burned near enough £4 million and Jimmy White, the best part of £4 million to £6 million.

‘Bollocks! Jimmy White has never earned four million pounds!’ laughs Higgy amiably, self-assuredly – and probably wrongly. ‘Where did you get that from?! Willie Thorne?! Willie used to lay horses, you know. I never did. Willie tried to be a bookmaker, but he couldn’t even count up at snooker! I’d like to know where they got those figures from because I never earned that kind of money. Mind you, Howard Kruger and Framework (his ex-management company) took most of it. But no-one earned from Snooker Loopy, did they? Shit, that wouldn’t get you one night in the Cafe de Paris to go loopy. What a load of bollocks!

‘There’s so much bollocks now in the modern game,’ he explains, under his breath, steadying a shaking cue to roll a brown neatly into the corner pocket. ‘I don’t really like many of the modern-day players, because they haven’t given anything back to the game. Today, I think the game is lacking. There’s a shower of people so overawed by self-importance they think that they are great at snooker and God’s gift to television presenting. It makes me want to throw up.’

So back to betting, and the serious issue of how to make a fast buck on snooker. Surely, if there’s one man with an experienced view on that subject, he’s potting the final black in our match and chalking up an easy victory. So easy, in fact, that we didn’t bother keeping scores.

‘Be careful when you bet on snooker,’ confides Higgy with a grin. Citing one particular recent match that IE can’t specify for legal reasons, he adds: ‘I felt the score would be 10-7 or 10-8, something like that. You could have got about 8/1 on that. But there’s been so many murky things in the past with players not trying.

‘Players have thrown matches. I’m not saying they would all stoop that low,’ he says, giving another example. According to Higgy, when certain players lead 8-1 in a match, it’s generally wise to get odds of 8/1 on the match finishing 10-5 or 10-6 rather than betting on a bigger winning margin. ‘That’s the way I would have a snooker bet these days. I’d never put £5,000 on a 1/5 chance,’ he concludes.

Match won

And so our match and interview is over. Higgins shakes hands, stays chatting for a while about horses (he gives us Kicking King, a 6/4 winner at Punchestown that afternoon) before rushing off to hire a suit for his niece’s wedding. It’s been an unexpected afternoon. Where was the Higgins of legend: the boozing, head-butting, coked-up lothario? The Higgins InsideEdge met was a total gentleman: polite, articulate and amusing. Sure, I’d bunged him £200, but in the grand scale of things, that was just a drink. In fact, I know I will be in a majority of one when I write this – and check Bill Borrows’ superb biography The Hurricane for the 339-page case for the prosecution – but I’ve interviewed hundreds of celebrities and none has ever been so helpful and pleasant. That’s the honest truth.

They say that if you stand in the eye of a hurricane, everything is calm – for a while at least – as the world around erupts in chaos. Maybe that’s it. Perhaps, on one afternoon in Belfast, that’s exactly where I was.