If You Like Ronnie O'Sullivan, First, Came Alex Higgins.

Back in the day, like most snooker of my generation, I was helplessly hooked on Alex Higgins. Contrary to popular belief, the Higgins fix wasn’t derived from actually watching him pot balls. Unlike every other snooker player who has played the game, Alex Higgins was at his most compelling when he wasn’t actually potting balls; potting difficult long balls and making sensational breaks out of nothing is all well and good, but entirely sports-related and thus - where Higgins was concerned – quite irrelevant.  No one paid money to watch Alex Higgins play. We paid money to watch Alex Higgins suffer when he wasn’t playing.

To be clear: Alex Higgins, the great showman of the baize, when at his peak was much like Laurence Olivier. When this Great Thespian bestrode the boards at the Young Vic in the 50s blasting out the immortal Stratfordian’s most rousing soliloquies of impending war and doomed love he never, ever disappointed. To watch Alex Higgins stroll into an auditorium and strut before the audience like a peacock in a highly connected mating season, was to witness a thrilling, self-consciously performative sportsman who delivered drama every time the gong sounded.

Oliver was a formidable actor. He was also a great mannerist. An entire generation of impressionists captured Larry’s repetitive tendency to roll his eyes, accentuate his nouns, and turn his voice into a soaring trumpet when reaching the end of a particular snappy couplet. It is a grand testament to the force of Higgins’ personality that millions of Brits who have never watched a game of snooker are familiar with his widely mimicked persona.

Granted, Alex, when bustling about the table had his ways: the sharp, noisy tapping of the cue against the table’s edge before he settled down to attempt a particular risky shot, the sudden jerking of his head before giving the stare of death to anyone who had moved in his eye-line, the folded arms and wide stance as he willed an opponent to miss, the Heathcliffian flick of the hair and the wild dash to the table after his opponent had missed to finally get the bloody show started!

All delightful stuff of course, but it was only when Higgins was forcibly glued to his chair by the remorseless scoring of the likes of Steve Davis that the full range of his gloriously over-the-top physical eccentricities blossomed into view. I’m sure you can remember his tics and twitches as well as I do: The famous Higgins’ “arched eyebrow”, weirdly identical to the architectural contours of De Gaulle’s beloved Arc De Triomphe, and stretched thin to the point of breaking; the defiant Higgins’ glare when he was forced to study an undeserving opponent cross the winning line was worthy of the doomed Beowulf standing his ground as the homicidal, bone-crunching, marrow-slurping Grendel fell upon him; Higgins’ endless chain-smoking, as if he were the manufacturer’s sole brand ambassador and contractually obligated to smoke a fresh cigarette every five-minutes off-camera and every two minutes when in full glorious BBC close up.

All of these camera lens-friendly mannerisms helped to create a lasting impression upon the collective cornea of the spellbound British public and bequeathed a fixed, almost mythic impression of a distinctively singular porting persona. Our recollection of Higgins, still to this day, remains capable of stirring vivid emotions in those who personally knew him and those who merely sat in the stands and had the pleasure of observing him while at work.

Higgins has passed on now and is sorely missed. It’s undeniable that his departure from snooker’s centre stage created a massive void that even the equally talented Jimmy White never quite managed to fill. For many years, despite the stellar performances of first-rate potters and break building such as Stephen Hendry and the aforementioned Jimmy White, something gutturally vital and uniquely creative was missing from the sport. We former Higgins’ addicts needed more from the game. I didn’t know it at the time but the fix I was looking for went by the name of Ronald Antonio O'Sullivan