I am who I am. They call me the Hurricane.
– Paul Norton, “The Hurricane” (1990)
It’s his game. | Brought him fame. | And his name is ‘The Hurricane’.
– Georgie Fame, “The Hurricane” (1982)
The musicians’ names may not be familiar. Georgie Fame is an English R&B and jazz musician, who played with Van Morrison and had three number one hits in the UK. Paul Norton is Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist who fronted the short-lived pop rock band The Runners.
But, if their names don’t resonate, their subject surely does – The Hurricane, aka Alex Higgins, aka one of the most beloved, controversial, iconic, and influential figures in snooker history. His rocket-fast, daring style of play was as legendary as his unpredictable, bad boy persona.
Historians describe with awe and zeal his history-making World Snooker Championship win in 1972 against John Spencer, forever changing the face and trajectory of snooker, or his come-from-behind match ten years later in the World Snooker semis against Jimmy White. Yet, his biography is equally riddled with stories of excess, such as head-butting tournament director Paul Hatherell or forever indulging in his “three vices – drinking, gambling, and women.”
In a sport that has had its fair share of staid, colorless personalities, the Hurricane, who died in 2010, was “an accident waiting to happen,” “a breath of fresh air,” and, for many years, “box office gold.”
Since Higgins first won the championship at age 22, there have been at least seven efforts to tell his story on the screen. I found four of the seven films, and as expected, they vary in their tone and structure, based on their time of release. (Note: the other three films are officially WANTED; please let me know if you can help me to locate them.)
Hurricane Higgins (1972) – WANTED
Until Higgins arrived from Belfast in 1972, snooker largely lacked panache or personality. Clive Everton once described it as, “a folk sport…a lot of people played, but the professional game was virtually dead.” The reigning champion was John Spencer, who had already won the World Championship in 1969 and 1971. Into this largely off-limits prim and proper world entered Higgins, who turned it upside-down by defeating Spencer 37-31.
The Hurricane Higgins 27-minute TV documentary came out on the heels of that victory. In the book Alex Higgins: Snooker Legend: Eye of the Hurricane, author J. Hennessey suggests the filmmakers wanted to portray snooker as a “game on the dole,” with Higgins as its resurrectionist. He quotes Higgins, “They deliberately set out to show the seedy side of snooker. They filmed at this club where there was green mold running down the walls. When they saw it, they said, ‘Great – just what we want.’”
Hurricane’s Wake (1988) – WANTED
Other than a brief BBC Two listing, I can find no information about Robin Anderson’s 17-minute documentary about a “budding snooker player [who] shows his form.”
Alex Higgins: I’m No Angel (1991)
After losing his first-round match to Steve James in the 1990 World Snooker Championship, Higgins got utterly sauced, and then announced his retirement at a press conference, but not before punching tournament official Colin Randle in the abdomen. The day’s debacle led to a 15-month ban from the sport.
During that hiatus, Higgins authorized the 90-minute documentary Alex Higgins: I’m No Angel, created by Joe and Oliver Cox. It was Higgins’ attempt to claim his narrative, though the Cox brothers did a great job of ensuring the documentary was not adulatory toward its subject. Opening with the aforementioned Paul Norton song, the film includes multiple quotes from fellow hellraiser actor Oliver Reed, as well as interviews with promoter Barry Hearn (“he was major box office on the table, but unmanageable off the table”) and his ex-wife Lynn Higgins, who “knew [her] problems were going to start” (after Higgins won his second World Championship in 1982 against Ray Reardon).
The film also highlights other historical highs and lows in the Higgins timeline, including his incredible 16-15 comeback against Steve Davis in the 1983 UK Championship; his “I will have you shot…I will blow your head off” threat against fellow Irish snooker star Dennis Taylor at the British Car Rental World Cup; and his “big penalty for a night out with the lads” when he fell 25 feet out a window. The film ends with Higgins’ promise to return to the sport in August 1991.
Alex Higgins: Rebel Without a Pause (1997)
Higgins did return to the sport, reaching the televised rounds of the 1994 World Snooker Championship, as well as making a 137 the following year, but his best days were long behind him. Alex Higgins: Rebel Without a Pause is primarily a 35-minute homecoming interview Higgins gave to Jackie Fullerton for BBC One Northern Ireland when he returned to Belfast for a nine-frame Sunday World exhibition match against Ken Doherty.
The documentary toggles between the Doherty match and clips from Higgins’ life, including the 1982 Championship against Reardon. Higgins is polite, soft-spoken, but obviously still bitter about the trajectory his career took following his ban from the sport. In one of the film’s more revealing moments, Higgins seethes, “Eight of ten people I’ve met are untrustworthy, thieves, felonious, pieces of shit.”
Like a Hurricane: The Alex Higgins Story (2001)
This hour-long 2001 documentary retells the story of I’m No Angel with a more robust cast of characters and without Higgins’ expressed permission. The film’s opening line makes clear its agenda: “Alex was an accident waiting to happen.” From there, Like a Hurricane brings us back to 1972, when the “urchin from Belfast” upended the establishment, “propelling snooker into the modern world and out of its dark excessive doldrums.”
Higgins the troublemaker was also Higgins the rainmaker; the more chaos he created, the greater the crowds grew. “Alex Higgins brought people into snooker who never had an interest in the sport – it elevated snooker from a backstreet sport into television entertainment.” His meteoric ascent was also intertwined with the rising popularity of Pot Black, the televised snooker tournament show that found its footing when BBC2 began broadcasting in color. By 1980, every match of World Championship Snooker aired on TV for 17 straight days.
Like a Hurricane also digs into his rivalry with Steve Davis, who represented the new face and controlled style of snooker; essentially, “everything Alex was not.” Barry Hearn, who created a stable of corporate, clean players (the Matchroom Team), but did not invite the volatile Higgins to join, commented, “It used to kill Alex inside when he lost to Steve Davis…Davis was the machine, Higgins was the heart” of snooker.
Finally, the documentary probes deeper into Higgins’ troubled relationships with women. His marriage and divorce to Lynn is well-discussed, with the narrator sharing, “Away from drinks, [Alex] was such a nice person, but when he drank, he was terrible. It drove away his wife. And when his marriage was floundering, so was his snooker.” The documentary also digs into his subsequent relationship with Siobhan Kidd, 13 years his junior, who attempted suicide and left years later after signs of battery, and Holly Haise, a 26-year-old escort, who stabbed him three times.
Alex Higgins: Blood, Sweat & Tears (2005) – WANTED
Four years later, RTÉ, Ireland’s national public service media, released a True Live documentary on Higgins called Blood, Sweat & Tears. Though I’ve been unable to watch it, the show seems largely memorable for providing a rare interview with Higgins’ daughter, Lauren, who was one of the most famous babies in the world when Higgins insisted on having her in his arms to celebrate regaining his world snooker title in 1982.
Alex Higgins: The People’s Champion (2010)
Rounding out the cinematic septet is Alex Higgins: The People’s Champion, the 2010 BBC documentary that posthumously retells Higgins’ life story about two months after he died. No longer the ‘accident waiting to happen,’ the opening lines are more hagiographic. The narrator James Hesbitt refers to Higgins as “almost a god,” and Ronnie O’Sullivan, a self-described disciple of Higgins, calls him “ahead of his time.” It is no wonder that the “No Angel” and “Rebel” appellations of previous documentary titles have been replaced with the more endearing “People’s Champion.”
Much of the film obviously echoes the earlier documentaries; after all, there’s no telling the Higgins story without discussing the Championship match against Spencer (1972), the semi against White (1982), the Championship match against Reardon (1982), the UK Championship match against Davis (1983), the headbutt of Hatherell (1986), and the death threat against Taylor (1990).
But, interlaced throughout the footage, players give their respect, citing Higgins’ influence on the sport, the industry, and their individual game. Davis, Reardon, White, O’Sullivan, Taylor, Stephen Hendry – they’re all here with stories and platitudes.
The documentary is perhaps most interesting in its assessment of Higgins’ final years, starting with his diagnosis of throat cancer in 1998. His daughter Lauren reminds us that Higgins said, “Cancer hasn’t got a chance. It doesn’t have a snooker cue.” And sure enough, he did beat the cancer, though he couldn’t truly recover, eventually deteriorating through a combination of respiratory problems, malnourishment, and financial distress caused by a long-term gambling addiction.
The final scene is the Belfast funeral procession, attended by a slew of snooker celebrities and seemingly most of Belfast’s 350,000-person population. As his sister says, “He was the people’s champion, and the people were letting them know on that particular day what they thought of him.”
