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Right on cue: Jimmy White talks O'Sullivan, Davis, Hendry and the Rolling Stones

Right on cue: Jimmy White talks O'Sullivan, Davis, Hendry and the Rolling Stones

Jimm White

Thursday, October 17, 2013

This feature appears in the current edition of Sport magazine. Download the free Sport iPad app from the Apple Newsstand, and follow on Twitter @Sportmaguk

Sport is running breathlessly down a corridor in Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, in search of Jimmy White.

The roguish southpaw snooker genius, people’s champion and six-time World Championship runner-up is, infamously, a tricky man to pin down. The ghostwriter of his autobiography, Rosemary Kingsland, tells a tale of chasing him into a pub only to realise he had, it seems, escaped through the back door.

White is in Westfield doing some filming for This Morning, talking about testicular cancer, which he survived after an operation in 1995. We are due to interview him afterwards, and we come armed with a crucial weapon: Jimmy’s feted ‘147’ number (a mobile number with 147 in), which is the key to calling him. The wind is somewhat taken out of our sails before leaving by our columnist Bill Borrows – himself blown out by the Whirlwind on three occasions in the past.

“Calling that 147 special helpline mobile number you’ve been given won’t help,” advises Borrows. “He’s got about 147 of them.”

Still, we’re optimistic on meeting White. That’s until a friendly ITV producer informs us that, despite arriving early, we’ve missed him by mere seconds. “He’s just gone to that Costa Coffee shop. I think he said your interview was on the phone.”

Hearing this, and foreseeing a swerve shot from the great man, Sport pelts it in that direction, calling the ‘147’ number as we go. No answer.

And no White, inside or outside the coffee shop. In a desperate move, we leg it to the nearest exit and run into a car park, looking around desperately.

A sleek-looking black car is humming in front of us. Blacked-out windows. It could be for anyone.

Is Philip Schofield in there, post his This Morning shift? “Is this car for Jimmy White?” we ask the driver. Suddenly, the back door opens and a cheery, familiar face pops out. It’s not someone who’s worked with Gordon the Gopher. “Are you from Sport?” says Jimmy White, scooching over to make room. “Hop in then mate – we can do this while we drive.”

CLEAN-UP KIDS
“It was so many years ago. I was 14 or 15. I just remember being in a black cab,” says White, recalling the days when he and Tony Meo would pocket oodles of cash in challenge matches against local snooker hall champs.

“We’d get picked up at the club in Tooting and then – there was no internet in them days – we’d literally put a pin in a map and go to a place. We’d get to the local snooker club, then this guy would go in and say: ‘I’ve got two boys here who will play anybody.’

“Now if you’d go to a club, they’d always have a good local player in the area who used to beat everybody else. So these people who he’d beaten would back that player against us – and we would clean up. Great experiences, great characters – but a lot of travelling in a black taxi.”

Any scrapes with people unwilling to pay up?

“We had a few close shaves where people, like, realised we were just far too good for anybody and they didn’t want to pay. But that wasn’t down to us [to collect], that was down to the backer,” says White, diplomatically.

Alongside his attacking verve with a snooker cue and everyman charm, however, the off-baize scrapes and stories that colour White are why he is to this day irresistibly popular with fans. Conclusive proof that snooker can be rock and roll comes in the tales of him playing an astounding level of snooker at Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood’s house, in boozy matches against his good friend Ronnie O’Sullivan.

“We’d all had a few Guinnesses,” he says. “Me and Ronnie [O’Sullivan] played ten frames and I think there was seven centuries. But it was good, because Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards were watching, but then everything got competitive between them as well. So they would start trying to outdo each other playing the guitars. Me and O’Sullivan had just as much fun watching them play as they did watching us on the table. Yeah. That was a good night.”

Too many ‘good nights’ are what is often considered the reason why – despite a host of titles, a maximum 147 at the Crucible and many more career highs – many believe White never quite fulfilled his prodigious potential.

“Obviously I’d like to have prepared better for some of those World Championships,” he says evenly when asked the hoary old question of whether he has any regrets. “Been a bit more focused. But I’m a realist – that’s gone. I’m still on the tour, I’m still playing. When you get to my age, one day you’re good and one day you’re bad, so you’ve got to keep practising – but the love of the game is massively still there.”

OLD RIVALS
Another reason for White’s serial finals demise was that his best years coincided with the most successful player in snooker history. The relentless Stephen Hendry bested White in four of his six final appearances, so it seems a trifle cruel to point out that the Scot is newly retired, and for the first time eligible to play in the World Seniors Championship – in which White is competing this weekend. Great news, or is White sick of the sight of him?

“Listen, he’s a great ambassador for the sport,” says White, choosing his words but delivering them with some genuine warmth. “I get on with him. I play him a lot of the Snooker Legends [exhibition] tournaments. He’s sort of semi-retired now, but obviously he’ll be one of the hardest to beat because he was such a great player.”

“Knowing Hendry, he will be practising as we speak,” adds White of his old foe. Same old, same old for the Scot, then. But what of White? Even at 51, the Londoner confirms he can still play with the attacking flair of his youth.

“I still go for my shots,” he says. “Occasionally I weigh up the percentages a little more, but people like to watch players take a gamble. The fans take the gamble with you. When the commentators say: ‘Well, he’s going to play safe now,’ and then you go for one – people experience that with you. So you get a lot of support from that.”

Does he ever find the public affection intrusive? “No, because the majority of the people who come up to me are genuine fans,” he says. “I’ve not been on the radar as much the past couple of years; not been on TV so much. I’ve really enjoyed that, because I have less people [who semi-recognise me] coming up to me and going: ‘I think you was on Emmerdale, right?’ No! It’s nice to just have snooker fans coming up to me. They’re great.”

White, along with O’Sullivan and the deceased Alex Higgins, make up the holy trinity of popular snooker players: mercurial, vulnerable virtuosos who have battled their demons away from the table. White, however, sees subtle differences in their playing styles.

“Ronnie is an instinctive player,” he explains. “You couldn’t teach what he’s got – and it’s the same with me; I wasn’t really taught [snooker]. People like to see any sport made easy, and when I was playing at my peak I made it look easy. Higgins was great for the big one-off shots, but O’Sullivan… he’s different. It’s mesmerising how good he can be.”

GOLDEN NUGGET
Despite being in awe of O’Sullivan’s abilities, White picks another player as the one it gave him most satisfaction to beat.

Steve Davis,” he says simply. “Because for me, when you beat Steve Davis when he was at his best, you felt like you’d been in a war. You had to fight for every ball. And he was the tactician of the snooker world. O’Sullivan is the best player I’ve ever seen, but Steve Davis was the hardest for me to beat. I’ve beaten O’Sullivan before and felt nothing – but whenever I’ve beaten Davis, I’ve always felt like I’d been in a match. So Davis was the man for me.”

It seems appropriate to be driving through the streets of London while talking to White, a working-class Tooting lad with the capital coursing through his veins. Talk turns, just before we’re due to be dropped off in Waterloo, to his ‘Whirlwind’ nickname, and to the other snooker nicknames he enjoys.

“Hurricane Higgins, Rocket O’Sullivan, Tony Drago – he’s the Tornado,” he lists. ‘The Outlaw’ Joe Swail, we suggest. “Yeah, that’s a good one. Nice fella, too,” says White brightly. “And ‘The Nugget’ for Davis.

I nicknamed him that – in the paper.”

White then pulls a final surprise, recalling that he didn’t always answer to his blustery sobriquet.

“Back in the snooker halls, they used to call me Snowy,” he says wistfully as he looks out of the window. Sport puts on the dunce’s hat and asks why. “Well, I’m Jimmy White, I suppose mate,” he says, turning to us with a lopsided grin. He certainly is – and it’s a pleasure to finally catch up with him.

Jimmy White will play in the 888casino World Seniors Championship on Oct 19 and 20 in Portsmouth, alongside legends Steve Davis, Dennis Taylor and Cliff Thorburn. See www.worldsnooker.com/tickets

 

 

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