Behind The White Ball

Book excerpt: After Hurricane Higgins crashed out of snooker's top league, Jimmmy White has been the `People's Champion' even though he never quite made the top World spot, pipped at the post in 1995 by Stephen Hendry, after missing one single black. Aged 16, White was the youngest player to win the English Amateur Championship. At 18, he won the World Amateur title. By 1984, he's a professional success, married but not at all settled. He's the kind of man who goes out for a packet of cigarettes and comes home two weeks later. Gambling, women, marathon binges with showbiz friends like Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, have threatened the stability of his marriage. But somehow White has survived, to tell in candid detail, a most unusual, often outrageous story of a very sporting life.