Whirlwind

Aubrey Malone

Description

Jimmy 'Whirlwind' White is Britain's best-loved snooker player. A one-time ragamuffin straight out of the pages of Charles Dickens, he has enthralled audiences the world over for three decades with his electrifying brilliance, winning ten world ranking events, although famously he lost six heartbreaking Crucible World Championship finals. In this in-depth, warts & all biography, die-hard fan Aubrey Malone examines scarlet pimpernel White's background, illiteracy, drinking, tempestuous relationship with his wife Maureen and his incredible rise to the top of snooker's pantheon of heroes in its halcyon era, the 1980s. There are also the tales of Jimmy using a walking stick to make a century break at his local snooker hall, his battles with the twin demons of drink and the yips and how he nearly lost the World trophy, despite never having won it! But in the end it is White's astonishing ability on the baize, often against all the odds, that shines through. The book also adds an extra dimension to the White legend as this is as much the story of a sporting obsession as a sporting star. Aubrey Malone once nearly lost his life when he crashed his car after a failed rendezvous with his hero and his obsession has also caused problems in his marriage. A snooker player himself, Malone always felt that if Jimmy heeded his advice about his technique (and attitude) he could break his Sheffield duck and land the Big One. Jimmy, of course, never listened, but that's why thousands love him, isn't it?

Sujets

• Snooker

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 24 novembre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909178526
• Langue: English

Extrait

Jimmy White
Aubrey Malone
This book is copyright under the Berne convention.
By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
© Aubrey Malone, 2009
The right of Aubrey Malone to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Know The Score Books Limited 118 Alcester Road Studley Warwickshire B80 7NT 01527 454482 [e-mail] www.knowthescorebooks.com
First published and printed in 2009. First published in eBook format in 2012.
eISBN: 978-1-909178-52-6 (Printed edition: 978-1-84818-742-9)
Ebook Conversion by www.ebookpartnership.com
CONTENTS
Preface
Zan’s
Ordinary Decent Criminals
Whirlwind
The Whirlwind Meets The Hurricane
Snooker Loopy
Vodka, Lager and Bensons
The Battling Burtons
Cracking the Nugget
Always The Bridesmaid
The Enemy
Cover Up
Too Much Love
Behind The White Ball
Inside the Mind of a Champion
White Riot
The People’s Champion
A Charmed Life
There’s Only One Jimmy White
Epilogue
Photographs
To Jimmy, the best world champion snooker never had. If you left something to error, it only made you even more compulsive.
PREFACE
MY WIFE MARY all too often had to suffer me going into a downer every time Jimmy White lost a snooker match.
She knew he was a great player and a lovely lad, but at the end of the day what did it matter if he won or lost? It was a recreational sport. It was meant to be enjoyed, for God’s sake. Why did I put myself through the pain barrier like that? I was asked over and over again. This isn’t a war, isn’t a cure for cancer, doesn’t split the atom, isn’t the Third Secret of Fatima.
"This is going beyond the beyonds," she said to me one night when I was almost chewing the carpet with rage after Jimmy missed a pot that would have won him a match. "You’ve got no life of your own any more. It’s all wrapped up in that idiot. I wish he was never born."
This was heresy.
"How can you say that?" I asked, distraught. "You know how good Jimmy makes me feel when he wins."
"Yes," she stormed back, "like once a year."
"That’s beneath the belt!" I shouted.
"You say it yourself all the time," she countered, painfully accurately. "Are you saying it’s okay for you to give out about him but not me? That’s sexist."
Mary told me that he was almost becoming like a religion to me, that I needed to break out of the bubble that was Jimmy.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe I wasn’t really as obsessed with him as I thought I was, or wanted to be. Maybe I just needed something or someone to be fixated on.
Maybe, I thought, I should set up a society called Snookeraholics Anony - mous. I will be the founder member and introduce each meeting with the words, ‘Hello, my name is Aubrey and I can’t stop thinking about Jimmy White’. If other members find themselves in a similar predicament they can ring one another and offer mutual consolation. The treatment will be to deny oneself a tournament a year until the symptoms abate. Full recovery would be reached when one could watch a White match with ranking points at stake without suffering palpitations when Jimmy was in the balls.
Mary wondered aloud if Snookeraholics might have a section for the spouses of failed snooker addicts who foisted all their fantasies on a taciturn cockney who made a career out of failing. She said she’d join up if it came to pass.
For her, the game of snooker was only marginally more interesting than bowls, or watching a plank warp. Her involvement in it was based purely (or impurely) on how Jimmy’s results impacted on my mental and, in rare cases involving lampshades, physical well-being. She knew if he lost I could make her life hell as well as my own, so she’d go down on her knees and say prayers to St Anthony that he would win – for both our sakes. She would later go into churches during his matches and offer up secret novenas that he’d come through and win just so as I would be bearable to live with.
I thought sometimes she might have been better off addressing her imprecations to St Jude: the Patron Saint of Hopeless Cases.
Not that Jimmy was hopeless. No, that was me. Hopelessly infatuated with the Whirlwind’s fortunes. I had been so ever since I’d witnessed what I still believe to be the most incredible match at Sheffield (yes, the 1985 final included) between Jimmy and Alex Higgins in the 1982 semi-final, when Jimmy so nearly reached the final. He captured the hearts of millions of otherwise sane supporters that day, and captivated many millions more as the soap opera of his life unfolded through various drink-fuelled shenanigans, marital troubles, lurid newspaper headlines and those famous six World Championship final defeats.
But whatever strife visited Jimmy, I was there, shouting for him, willing him on, so deeply involved I felt his pang of pain across my chest as another ball lipped out of the pocket.
His journey was my journey for so much of my life. I was, still am, obsessive. And every single moment of it has thrilled me to my core.
This is the magic of Jimmy White – ‘The Whirlwind’.
ZAN’S
IT’S 1976:
In Zan’s snooker hall in Tooting, south London a 14-year-old boy called Jimmy White has just made a break of a hundred. He has a pale complexion and an under-fed look. He’s wearing a scruffy jumper and jeans and is racing around the table as if this is all too easy. Any time he pots a ball, even the full distance of the table, his expression doesn’t change as they slam into the pockets. Casually, he moves swiftly on to the next shot.
When he gets the cue ball where he wants it, around the black spot, he nudges reds gradually away from the pack, playing delicate little cannons to dislodge them one by one. The white doesn’t travel far, just a few inches here and there as the reds disappear and he’s finally down to the colours. When Jimmy pots the brown he does so with a terrific amount of side so that the white ball comes back off the top cushion, at the opposite angle to that which the bemused and startled onlookers expected.
There’s a slight whistle from an old man standing by, sipping a can of lager. His name is Bob Davis. Also standing by is a 17-year-old lad called Tony Meo. When Jimmy finishes his break, having cleared the table, Tony racks the balls up again for another frame. This time it’s Tony who gets in first. He makes a century too, but it takes him a little more time, and he shows more emotion on the awkward shots.
As they go to set up the balls for a third frame, Davis comes over to Jimmy and says, "Ain’t you supposed to be at school, son?"
Jimmy shrugs his shoulders, saying nothing. "We have a day off," Tony says, but Davis doesn’t believe him.
"I have an arrangement," Jimmy says, in a smoker’s voice.
"How do you mean an arrangement?" Davis asks.
"Tony and me, we was in school this morning, that’s how it works." Now it’s Davis’s turn to shrug his shoulders.
Jimmy sits down and lights up a cigarette, smoking it with his thumb and index finger, sucking in those thin cheeks until you feel the nicotine is going all the way down to his toes. "Nice break," says someone from a card table at the other side of the hall and Jimmy breaks into a half-smile, showing a mouthful of crooked teeth.
"How’s about you play me for a few quid?" Jimmy shouts across at him.
"No chance," the man replies. "I don’t fancy me chances against sharks like you lot."
Jimmy smiles again, as does Tony. Meo is dressed more sharply and wears shoes like spats which makes him look akin to something out of the film Bugsy Malone . He has a tan complexion, a Latin look. Outside it’s bucketing down. The day darkens but the play goes on, the two young men trading frames without speaking, only moving from the table to notch up their scores or light another cigarette. A small crowd gathers to watch. All you can hear is the gentle clack of the balls and the rain on the roof. If the balls run awkwardly they simply set them up again. They want to pot, pot, pot.
Underneath the table there’s a television in a huge binliner, a broken aerial sticking out of the side. Next to the table there are a bunch of watches, all exactly the same, thrown in a heap beside a man dressed in a dirty anorak. Another man with cards in his hands starts arguing figures with him, nodding his head as he makes some kind of deal. A radio crackles in the background. Bob Davis is writing something in a notebook.
Eventually there’s a knock on the door and Ted Zanicelli, the owner of the hall, goes out to answer it. "Jimmy White in here?" comes a voice. "Haven’t seen him all day," Zanicelli replies. There’s a pause. "Mind if I have a look?" the voice says. A face pokes around the door, but all he can see is Tony Meo. Jimmy is under the table.
"Who are you playing with, Tony?" the voice asks.
"Him," Meo replies, pointing to a man at the card table. The man gets up and lazily chalks a cue. He steps up to the table to play a shot.
The feller at the door is unimpressed. "I’ll be back later," he harrumphs as he leaves.
After he’s gone, Jimmy comes out from under the table and asks, "Who was that?"
"Your brother," Ted says. "Let’s see you home after this one."
"All right, guv," says Jimmy, breaking the pack for the last frame of the evening.
Bob Davis has gone to make a phone call. Tony Meo is admiring himself in a mirror, while White is soon on a break, laconic and yet intense, masterfully ordering the balls to do what he wants as a clock on the wall ticks brokenly into the n