Virgo - Let Me Tell You About Alex : Wild Days and Nights on the Road with the World’s Greatest Snooker Player Alex ’Hurricance’ Higgins

M y aim in writing this book was to present the serious and lighter side of an extraordinary talent. Alex Higgins made snooker sexy, racy and massively entertaining and changed the face of my beloved sport. He put it on the world stage and made it a game now enjoyed by millions globally. Certainly, there were times when we didnt see eye to eye but as a colleague and a friend we had some great times. Thank you, Alex, for the ups, downs, laughs and hysteria. The snooker world will miss you, bud.

This book is a true labour of love and would not have been possible without the vision of my publisher John Blake. Thank you for your belief in both me and Alex. Huge thanks also for teaming me up with the highly talented Chas Newkey-Burden. Thank you, Chas, for your time and endless patience. I have learned a lot from Chas and I would like to think he is now a bit of a snooker expert not to mention a horse racing pundit! I hope we work together again, Chas, I enjoyed our days of reminiscing and pasties!

I had a great time working with the first class team at John Blake Publishing not least my amazing editor, Lucan Randall. Forever gracious, Lucian worked tirelessly to accommodate my late changes and impossible scrawl and miraculously still got this book out on time!

I am also indebted to many people without whom this book would not have been possible. In particular I would like to thank my dear friends Jimmy White, and Geoff Lomas who knew Alex as well as I did and helped to remind me of some of our times with him. Thanks also to Eric Whitehead, David Muscroft, Roger Lee and Trevor Smith for searching their archives and producing the great photos of Alex.

Lastly to my darling wife, Rosie the heart and soul of John Blake Publishing without whom this book would not have seen the light of day. This book is dedicated to her.

W hen Alex Higgins passed away, all of those who knew and loved him were devastated. I was in awe of Alex and I cried all day when I heard the news. It was not just that the sport I love had lost its most influential ever figure I had lost a much-loved friend and the man who so influenced my game and life.

Alex was a wonderful and sometimes wild man, a much discussed but little understood figure. His potent combination of snookering genius and personal notoriety fascinated the media and the public, but he could also be a guarded and baffling character, so nobody until now has managed to get to the core of who he was.

There is nobody better equipped to write about Alexs life than John Virgo, and no one more qualified to explain just how influential he was in snooker. John was there as Alex made history at the table and made headlines away from the game. Like me, he loved Alex and has witnessed first-hand the highs and lows of this sporting genius.

Alex inspired a generation of people to play snooker. I know I was one of them. He made the game popular and exciting and single-handedly fired it into the mainstream. The history books might show that he won just two world titles, but the hearts and minds of the public show that he won so much more than that.

For all the controversy that surrounded his life, Alex will never be forgotten. He was a great friend to me and he had the heart of a lion. In these pages, John gets to that heart and shows you what it was really like to work and play alongside Alex Higgins as he revolutionised the game of snooker.

There was never a dull moment when he was around. So sit back and let John tell you about Alex. Its a fascinating story

Jimmy White

I think a lot of us who knew Alex Higgins well suspected he would not live on to a ripe old age. He just always had an aura around him of one who might meet an untimely end. Sadly, our suspicions were proved right. There was an additional tragedy in that our final memories of him were mostly uncomfortable ones. Yet even near the end there were moments of magic from the Hurricane.

I got him involved in a tour of exhibition matches near the end of his life. It proved a testing experience at times. We knew that he had been very ill, but as far as we were concerned he had been given the all-clear from cancer. Well, you wouldnt have thought it to look at him he had lost a lot of weight. He was only on the tour because Jimmy White had been forced to pull out at the last moment due to some ill health of his own. To think that the promoters had been worried about telling the public that Jimmy wouldnt be there! They neednt have worried, because they had replaced him with a man who was pure box-office to the end. From the first match we did on that tour, the punters were queuing round the block to see him.

Sadly, Alex did not appear to be the Hurricane any more. He was moving so slowly round the table and was clearly a mere shadow of the man he had previously been. The only Higgins speciality he seemed to have remembered was his grouchiness. If someone in the front row of the audience moved while he was lining up a shot he would glare at them. He created this atmosphere, which was actually scary to a point audience members were terrified to move and everyone felt a bit uncomfortable. But then, in the last frame of an exhibition game in Newport in South Wales, the magic suddenly came back. He suddenly changed and made a 143 break. The effort he had put into it was just stunning. There was sweat literally pouring off him as he moved around the table. When he reached the 70 mark the audience were suddenly completely behind him to make the 100 break. That is the landmark, after all: any professional wants to make a 100 break. Then he got past the 100 and cleared up; there was a standing ovation for him. The roof nearly came off the place. I was so happy. Could this be the spark of a major comeback for Alex? I dared to wonder. He came over to me and gave me a hug and the emotions were running high for everyone. He was still pouring with sweat, he was drenched. I thought, Thats why hes still playing. He is a man with so much willpower and effort inside him.

Jimmy played a few exhibitions with Alex after that. Although Alex wasnt up to his usual standards of play, there were still some explosive moments. On one occasion Alex was reaching over to make a difficult pot and Jimmy asked the referee whether Alex had accidentally fouled by touching the blue. The referee agreed and called Foul! Alex walked past the referee and punched him in the stomach. Outrageous behaviour and though there were many times in his life when he could get away with such things, those times had long since passed by now. The referee was not about to stand for being punched. He turned round and grabbed Alex. As the referee held him in a headlock, Jimmy was laughing in the background. Only Alex could get into these scrapes, and only he could have people laughing as he did so.

Then, he, Jimmy and I went to Jersey to do a charity night. The young son of one of the sponsors was sitting in the front row of the audience, fidgeting a bit as he watched. He must have been around seven years of age. Alex missed an important black and decided it was the boys fault. He walked up to the lad and said, If you move again, Im going to have you shot. That is just Alex.

Subsequently, we signed up to perform a Legends tour at Sheffields Crucible, the home of snooker. It was a week before the World Snooker Championship in April 2010. Alex caused trouble with the promoter straightaway, by wanting an extra 250 to wear the waistcoat they suggested. When I introduced him to the crowd he kissed me on the cheek as he passed me. It was quite odd that he did that, considering all the run-ins we had down the years. Naturally, there was rapturous applause for him but he just couldnt play properly. I was commentating on the proceedings but I didnt say much while Alex was playing. I just found it all a bit macabre you dont want to watch your heroes like that. This was a man who could once play every shot in the book, but now, put him on a simple black and he would be struggling to screw the ball back two inches. Hed just got no energy or power left. He had been living on baby food for some time, after losing all his teeth during his cancer treatment. It was terrible to watch him at the Crucible and I wasnt surprised when the promoter quickly decided that Alex wouldnt be asked to take any more part in the tour.