Running: The Autobiography (16 page)

Only one candidate here, and that’s my mate Damien Hirst. On the outside people see this mega-rich artist with an attitude to match. But his outward persona is so different from who he is. He is perhaps the most generous and kind-hearted person I’ve ever met. He’s been my wingman during three championships, of which I won two. He’s made me laugh when the shit has truly hit the fan.

He’s one of the few people I want around when I’m playing. He’s invested so much time and energy in helping me through those difficult times and I don’t want to let him down when I’m playing.

Damien comes to lots of tournaments with me – Sheffield, Wales, Gloucester, Germany, Premier League. I’ve hardly ever lost when he’s been there. He plays a lot; he’s had a break of 40-odd, and he loves snooker. He can come in at the interval and I know the player is trying to fuck me about, and he’ll say: ‘What’s his game? Why’s he doing that? Don’t let him freak you out. But if you do get beat, fuck it, we’ll go to London and have a good time. Who gives a shit?’

Damien came to watch me in the 2008 World final. I didn’t have a clue who he was at the time. He came down with Antony Genn. Gradually I got to know Damien, and we just got on great.

He came to about five or six tournaments a couple of seasons ago. He stayed for all 17 days at Sheffield – he went back home for his kid’s birthday, then came straight back. He said, I’ve got to go and do the birthday with the boy, but I’ll be back – bang! Sylvia, his PA, is a big snooker fan so it was just like the three of us. And when I took my year out of snooker, I said to Sylvia,
it feels like I’m never going to see you again, because snooker was our way of meeting up. She said: ‘No, no, no, it won’t be like that’ but I was right – I didn’t see Damien for about nine months. The snooker was a great excuse for Damien to say, I’m not working for a week.

Damien did me a massive favour with Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. Ronnie and I go back a long way now – years ago, when he was still with his wife Jo, me and Jimmy White used to go round to theirs and play snooker epics while getting slaughtered with him and Keith Richards. One night we were off our heads and me and Jimmy just hit century after century. It was probably the best we’ve ever played, and nobody was there to see it except a couple of blitzed Rolling Stones. Keith said I was the Mozart of snooker – I may not be up on classical music, but even I know that’s a compliment.

Anyway, every so often one of Ronnie’s family would ring me and say: ‘Can you help get Ronnie straight? He’s got to go on tour – he’s in a state and Mick wants him straight.’ I think they called on me because they knew all about my past, and that I was an addict who really was trying to keep straight despite my relapses. Ronnie could never get it, and so his family had come to see me as the best person to come down and take him to the Priory. I think for Ronnie it became a bit like, oh, here we go again, ring me up, go down the Priory, show willing, but he knew he wasn’t going to get clean, he was just doing it to keep the family off his back. I’d taken him to the Priory a couple of times after being summoned to the house.

By now, though, Ronnie seemed to be in a worse state than ever. He’d gone off with the Russian girl I was indirectly responsible for introducing him to. It was the premier of the Rolling
Stones film in 2008 and we were on a mission. It was just after the World Championship and I was like a lunatic, hanging out with the Stones’ kids, just an unbelievable night, and it ended up with me, Jimmy and Ronnie stuck in a hotel room at about five in the morning, and I’ve gone, come on, let’s go to a club, so we end up going to some London bar, so we get a couple of girls, and Ronnie only goes and falls in love with a Russian girl. This was the year of my binges.

Ronnie’s going: ‘Thanks, thanks, for the night’, and I’m like: ‘What are you talking about, you need to get a flight soon.’ And he’s still thanking me.

The next day I get the phone calls: ‘Where’s Dad? Where’s Dad?’, and I said: ‘I left him in his hotel room at seven this morning and he looked all right. He was in bed, and I had to go.’ And Ronnie’s son Jamie was saying: ‘But he ain’t turned up!’ Anyway, he did manage to get the flight to Kenya to join the family. When he came back from there I put him in the Priory. He didn’t intend to get clean, not because he didn’t want to but because he didn’t know how to.

He then came out and was holed up with the Russian girl in Ireland and his family were in pieces.

This time when Jamie rang me I was at a loss as to what to do. So I thought about it and said: ‘I think I’ve met somebody that Ronnie might listen to; that he might respect.’ I think Ronnie respected me as a person and as a player, but we’d done too many drugs and too much drink, too many nights out for him to take me seriously as the rehab man. I thought, Damien is a hugely successful artist, so Ronnie, who is a very good artist himself, will look up to him, and I thought maybe I could persuade him to do it for Damien.

I hardly knew Damien when I asked him if he could do me a favour. He said: ‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Ronnie Wood is in a bad way,’ I said. ‘His family are worried sick, and he needs to get away, can you help? I can’t do any more – he’s not listening to me, he’s not listening to Mick Jagger.’ Addiction’s such a powerful thing that not even Mick knew what to do with him, but I just had an instinct that Damien would be able to help. I’m not the most clued-up person, but sometimes I can put things together and can see things working out. And boom! It all happened so quickly.

Damien said, leave it to me and he and Antony hired a private jet, and Damien phoned him up, and said, where are you? He said, I’m in Ireland, and Damien said, right we’ve got to come and get you. So he went over to Ireland to get Ronnie with Antony, who has been clean for well over a decade and has been there and done it. Antony had done all his research – he said, I’m not just banging Ronnie up in the Priory, we’re going to do this properly. Damien and Antony didn’t know Ronnie at the time.

He couldn’t get out of his house in Ireland because it was surrounded by photographers waiting for him to emerge with the Russian girl. But they managed to smuggle him out of the back of the house under a blanket, into a car and on to a plane. If it had been me I’d have said: ‘Just get in the fucking car, Ron, you’re life’s fucked, who cares?’ But they did it the right way. He said: ‘We’re sending him to this place in England, make sure he’s got no mobiles, no this, no that, there’s no fucking about here, it’s one month intense.’ It was classic Ronnie as he went in – ‘I’ve got to have a drink before I go into rehab.’ So they stopped off to let him have a pint and they got there. I phoned Antony and said: ‘How did it go?’ and he went: ‘Fuck me, it was a long and emotional day!’ But Ronnie went there and got well.

When Ronnie came out he moved into Antony’s for a week or so, and Antony looked after him. Then Damien rented a house for him, and the day he moved in a big lorry pulled up outside; it was full of art equipment – stencils, pencils, paints, brushes, boards, you name it. Damien did that all off his own back. They’ve all stayed mates, and Ronnie has stayed clean, which is brilliant. Ronnie obviously takes the credit for that, but Damien and Antony played a massive part.

Along with Irish Chris, Damien is my man in the corner these days. I met Chris through AA, and he’s another motivation to stay clean as he’s one of my best mates and I want him in my life. The great thing about Chris and Damien is that I can be myself with them. I’ll tell them how shit I think I really am at snooker and they just look at me as if I’m mad. That’s friendship!

Although Damien and I had great fun, and he’s been a brilliant support, we’ve never been on a bender together. He’s been straight ever since I knew him. Damien has been an amazing friend to me. He thinks I’ve got autism. He says: ‘The way you play snooker, it’s like a form of autism.’ I think it’s a compliment! He means that the way I play is beyond teaching and he might have a point.

Before I met Damien I didn’t have a clue about his pickled sharks and horses and butterflies and what not. I didn’t know he was the most successful artist in Britain. But now I know a bit more about art I know just how talented he is. I was with him the night he did his auction at Sotheby’s in 2008 and made a fortune. The funny thing is we weren’t actually at the auction. We were in a dingy snooker hall in London’s King’s Cross.

Damien decided to flog an entire show called ‘Beautiful Inside My Head’, and nobody had ever done that before.
Well, nobody had ever done that before and made so much money.

Damien gave me a ring before the auction and told me about it and then said he wasn’t going to be there for it.

‘What’s going on, Damien?’ I said. ‘Why are you not gonna be there?’

‘Well, normally when an auction’s going on I just go down the Groucho Club and hit a few balls,’ he said. ‘It’s too much for me to be around it, and I just get someone to ring up to tell me what’s going on. And I just love playing snooker.’

‘Right!’ I said. ‘I’ll bring the balls and the cues and meet you there.’ And he was like: ‘Yeah, lovely, come down.’

So we got there for around 6 p.m., hit a few balls and the auction was kicking off at 7 p.m. No one knew what to expect because the banks had just gone bust and nobody knew whether anybody was going to spend money. Then the first lot came up and Sylvia said: ‘D’you want me to tell you how much it goes for?’

Damien went: ‘Well, course I do.’

Sylvia was taking the phone calls. ‘Five million,’ she said. It was meant to go for about £3 million.

‘Five million for the first lot?’ I said. I couldn’t believe it. My head was rushing – £8 million, £9 million, £13 million, £14 million, £850 grand for an ashtray.

I went: ‘That ashtray just got eight hundred and fifty grand and there are another two of them!’

As the auction went on, I thought, I’ve just got to start potting balls to take his mind off it. So I started making a few breaks, doing the shots, entertaining him, and we had a good night.

‘Why are they paying so much for an ashtray? I don’t get it,’ I said to him.

He started laughing. I couldn’t get my head around it. And after an hour and a half he finished with £111 million. My head was gone. To be fair, so was his. We just got back to the hotel, and me and Ronnie and my little mate T and a few others were sitting in Damien’s room, but he had just disappeared. I thought, where’s Damien gone? Antony texted me to say: ‘We’ve had to get out and get another room just to lie down!’

The thing that’s surprised me most about Damien is his ability to cook. He really is a genius in the kitchen. When I stay at Damien’s for four or five days, I’m on a mission to eat as much as possible because I don’t know when I’ll be there next. Pizza, lasagne, roasts, curries, he can turn his hand to anything. If you ask me he’s an even better cook than artist.

Damien made a painting for me of the 147 I made in record time in the 1997 World Championship (5 minutes 20 seconds, seeing as you’re asking). I can’t keep it at home because I’ve not got a wall big enough for it. It’s the same size as a snooker table – 12 by 6. I don’t know what it’s worth, but it must be a fortune. He kept saying to me, have you got a wall 12 by 6 in size? And I’m like, what are you talking about?

I’d heard he made paintings for people, but I just thought, I don’t want him to do anything for me, I just like his friendship. I’ve always been like that with people – I’m not good at accepting gifts. I don’t want to be a sponger. Bollocks to that. So whenever he asked about my wall I just ignored him. Then one day I got a call saying: ‘Damien would like you to come down to the studio’ and I thought, oh no, he’s done something for me, but I didn’t have a clue what.

I was just walking through the studio when he said: ‘What d’you think of that?’ and I looked at this painting, and just went: ‘Wow! That’s my 147! I can see what you’ve done. I can
see where the balls are.’ It was the most beautiful thing. He said: ‘If it isn’t right, tell me, and I’ll do it again.’ I was like: ‘No, it’s perfect.’

13

DODGY DEALINGS

‘Sunday morning, Epping Forest, easy eight and a half miles. Did not enjoy my run, lost my love for it at the moment, it feels like an effort.’

When you’re involved in a sport you hear all sorts of rumours about what’s going on. I think there are elements of corruption in any sport. In snooker, there must be players who think they could make more out of this match than they could probably make out of my whole career if they just take a bit of a fall. We’re all doing maths with our careers. And there will be players who say, I could give everything to my next five years and if I’m lucky I’ll make £50,000–£100,000, or I can throw this match or frame and make £100,000, maybe get away with it, and continue playing as if nothing happened.

That’s how I reckon some snooker players must think. They like their money, they like their gambling, they like a certain standard of living. If they can get away with it, they will. I could think of seven or eight who have done it. I reckon 80–90 per cent of it is at a lower level, then there are a couple at the top level who would do it.

I was shocked when I saw the story in the
News of the World
about John Higgins apparently agreeing to chuck frames. It
was a sting operation, undercover in a hotel room in Kiev, and the paper alleged that he had agreed to lose four frames in four different matches for €300,000. John issued a statement the day the story came out saying he’d only agreed to it because he was shitting himself and wanted to get out of the room alive. He reckoned he was talking to the Russian mafia and didn’t want to end up swimming with the Kiev fishes. In the end, he received a six-month ban for giving the impression he would breach the rules and for failing to report the approach made to him and was fined £75,000 but was cleared of corruption charges. ‘If I am guilty of anything, it is naivety and trusting those who I believed were working in the best interests of snooker and myself,’ he said when he was banned.

In a way John had a bit of a result. He could easily have been thrown out of the game for longer, perhaps even banned for life. His manager, Pat Mooney, looked like the guy who was instigating it, but obviously John was there in the room and they’ve got him on camera saying: ‘Oh yeah. Frame three I’m going to lose, yes, yes’, and that was never going to look good, whatever his excuses.

To be fair to John, I don’t believe he would ever throw a big tournament.

I wasn’t only shocked when the news about John came out, I was also upset. John and I have always been close – as friends and rivals – and he’s a hero to me. Only Hendry has ever played the game like him and an even bigger desire to win. In the post-Hendry generation, I suppose it’s often been me and John fighting it out for the major tournaments. Our families have also got on well. I’ll never forget how generous he was the first time I won the World Championship, and how the first thing he did was pass on his congratulations to my dad. So I’m glad
he’s managed to put the
News of the World
sting behind him. I’m sure it taught him a lesson.

In October 2012, Stephen Lee was suspended by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association after allegations of irregular betting patterns. It wasn’t the first time there had been allegations made against Stephen. In February 2013 the WPBSA dropped charges against him in relation to matches played in 2008 and 2009. The charges all related to betting and entering into an agreement to influence the result of the match.

It’s a shame that he’s got himself suspended because he’d got his form back, he got back up to number eight in the world, won £200,000–£300,000 last year, was doing well for himself. His form was as good as it had been for years. Stephen has denied any allegations of wrongdoing through his lawyer, Tony Miles. ‘He does not accept that he has been involved in any breaches of the rules and regulations and is gravely disappointed that a decision has been taken to bring proceedings against him.’

While I sincerely hope Stephen is found innocent, if he is not he obviously wouldn’t be the first player to succumb to temptation. I’m not sure what goes through their minds, but throwing matches is never going to end up well.

There had always been rumours that this kind of thing went on. I remember the South African snooker player Silvino Francisco being arrested in 1989 after he’d lost 5-1 to Terry Griffiths and it was discovered there’d been heavy betting on that score, but he was released without charge (though he was later jailed for three years for smuggling cannabis). But all the gambling stuff was hearsay till the John Higgins sting. Then, when Barry Hearn came in to run snooker, he said, we’re not going to tolerate this; we’re going to police the game properly. Barry actually put a superintendent on the investigating panel looking into betting scandals. It was a deterrent as much as anything – he
was saying that if anybody was tempted to break the law, they would be caught out.

I was once offered money to throw matches, but I said no chance. Someone rang me and said he’d like to meet me over in the forest and have a walk through the woods. I knew the fella, and it was someone you don’t want to mess around with. I thought, fuck me, what have I done wrong here, I’m in trouble. When people say that to you, you think, hold on, am I going to come back alive?

Typical that it was Epping bloody Forest, too. The same place I went to run to get my peace of mind.

I met up with the fella because I didn’t know what it was about. I was nervous. There was just the one fella. ‘Alright, Ronnie, how you doing?’ he said.

‘Yeah, I’m sweet,’ I said, though I felt anything but sweet.

‘We’ll just go for a little walk up here,’ he said. Jesus. I thought, okay we’ll just go for a walk. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of these people. They’re nice enough as people, but you still don’t want to piss them off. I try to have nothing to do with them so they don’t have any reason to dislike me.

‘You’re playing in the Premier League,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘And we’ve got people who can put big bets on.’

Oh, great, I thought. Just what I need.

‘If you lose this frame and this frame we can get enough on it to make some money. We’ll give you this out of it.’

What they were offering me, 20 grand, I could get for a couple of nights’ work. Not that the amount would have made any difference. I just didn’t want to be there, let alone talking about throwing a match. So I told him straight I couldn’t do it. They were perfectly nice about it.

‘No problem, Ron, fair enough, we respect your wishes.’

The whole thing lasted about 15 minutes. He was good as gold. I think he respected me for being straight and upfront. That all happened about 10 years ago. It was the only time I’ve been approached, and I came away thinking, blimey that was a bit weird.

If anyone could get away with it, I could. I could just play one-handed, or left-handed, or just put a towel over my head and pretend I was going nuts. But it’s not something I would or could do. I couldn’t live with myself; I’d feel that I was robbing somebody.

I think my honesty goes back to when I was a kid and I was a bit of a liar. I’d get in trouble at school, lie about nicking money out of Dad’s wages – those little packets that came through the door, I’d take a fiver out of them. And I got to the point where Dad slippered the lies out of me. In the end, I just couldn’t lie, and that has followed me all the way through. In some ways I wish I could lie. Everybody else seems to be saying one thing but meaning another. Dad is basically honest, but whereas I say everything I’m thinking, he’ll be like, no you shouldn’t say this, you shouldn’t say that. I suppose I’m a compulsive truth teller. I find it difficult to be any other way because then I just feel as if I’m spewing out words.