12

HEROES

‘Bike at the gym, Fartlek session, a Swedish way of training – walking, running. No set distance, but I pushed myself hard enough so I felt it.’

I’ve always had my sporting heroes. When I was growing up, I played football, golf, tennis. But I was mad about snooker. I wasn’t so much into team games, though I did like a game of football and had trials for Spurs at one point. But I felt I was an individual within a team. I never saw football as a team game – I didn’t like to pass, was always greedy, always took on an extra man. I like to do something to excite myself, and that isn’t the sign of a great team player. So I’d excel more in one-to-one sports. Rather than play football at dinnertime, I’d go and play table tennis for an hour, and I’d try to play with the best in the school. I was the best player in my year apart from one kid, Paul Hudson, who played for England Schools. He was unbelievable.

I found sport easy. Anything with a ball was easy for me. I think you’ve either got a feel for a ball or you haven’t. So if I was going to kick a football or hit a tennis ball I’d instinctively know where to. Mum used to play tennis for fun with her mates, and Dad was a good semi-pro – he played for Leyton Wingate and had trials for Arsenal and QPR when he was a youngster but never quite made it. Sport ran through the family. My granddad and his brothers were all boxers – the fighting O’Sullivans, they were called. I’ve never boxed, mind. I wouldn’t mind having a go. I don’t like fighting, but boxing is different – more of a science to it; science and ballet. I was never into fighting. That’s probably why I became a decent runner – because I’d always run a mile from a fight. Not surprisingly, my heroes tend to be individuals rather than team players.

Snooker heroes:

Jimmy White, Steve Davis & Stephen Hendry

My first hero was Jimmy White, the most exciting snooker player of my childhood. Then the more I got into snooker, the more I wanted to be a winner and Steve ‘the Nugget’ Davis became my hero. I loved Jimmy – he was the people’s favourite, the great entertainer, and hugely successful. But in the end he always fell just short – six world finals, all of them lost. I was so disappointed that I thought maybe I should make Steve Davis my role model instead because I wanted to be a winner. If I’ve got to become robotic and play like the Nugget to win, that’s what I’ll do, I told myself. He became known as Steve ‘Interesting’ Davis – that was a Spitting Image piss-take. He might have looked boring compared to Jimmy, but actually he was more aggressive than most of the other players of his time. Some of the players of his generation were so slow – Terry Griffiths and Cliff Thorburn were both great players, but I could get a quick 10-kilometre run in while they were considering a shot.

I was always a fast player because my brain worked quickly, but my style became robotic. I wouldn’t move, kept everything still and just copied how the Nugget walked into shot, how his hips were, how his left leg was bent, how his right shoulder was over his right leg, how his left arm was bent, how far he was from the ball, how straight his arm was. I watched every bit, and mimicked it all. And I became more consistent, more machine-like, even though I was still fast. I still played the open game Jimmy White played, but I was more deliberate in my technique. As a junior I think my technique was as perfect as it could be. I’ve managed to get a few faults in my game since I was 16, and they’ve held me back a bit and stopped me being as consistent as I used to be.

So Davis was my first sporting hero. Then Stephen Hendry came along. I started to watch what he did and to mimic him. Where Davis was rigid, Hendry had that stillness but he was also a much more floaty player. Rather than punch balls in, he caressed them in, and he had more of a feel for break building. He was lighter in his approach, more delicate. He didn’t have the greatest cue power, but around the black spot he could manufacture shots that nobody had ever seen, and as far as I’m concerned there’s never been a better long-ball potter, especially under pressure. Under pressure, he’s the best sportsman I’ve seen. So he was my biggest teacher. I played him lots of times and he taught me how to become a winner. Until then I was more likely to say: ‘Well, I’ll play that ball safe, just in case I make a mistake’, but to do that against Hendry was the biggest mistake you could make. I’d try to put a red safe and leave the white on the cushion and two shots later he’s got the red off the cushion, potted it and is on his way to clearing up. And he was the only one who played such audacious shots. I thought, if he’s doing it and he keeps winning, he’s obviously doing the right thing and the rest of us are doing it wrong.

In 2002 we had a ridiculous falling-out, and he didn’t speak to me for three years. That hurt because he was my hero. But it was entirely my fault. Well, my fault and my mate the boxer Naseem Hamed’s.

I was down watching Naz training and he said, when you play you’ve got to say I’m the best, I’m this, I’m that, and I was like, well, it’s not me. Then I thought, well, maybe he’s right and I’m wrong and I need to start being like Naz. The end result was I questioned Stephen’s sportsmanship over a ball that had been called a miss ages ago (mad, because he’s the best sportsman in the world), and announced in a press conference that I was going to send him back to his sad little life in Scotland. Jesus, I blush just remembering it. As soon as I said it I thought, what am I doing, I love Hendry, he’s my hero. But I was listening too much to the advice of other people. It worked for Naz, who was brilliant at talking himself up, but it just wasn’t me. Then when I told Naz what I’d said, he went: ‘Oh no, what d’you go and say that for?’ Even though Naz got me in shit, and not for the first time, I love him – his heart’s in the right place, and he loves me and his family love me. Having said that, I’d never listen to him again, never go to a mosque with him again, never have a pep talk from him again. I’ll have a bit of grub with him, but that’s about it. He’s huge these days – physically, that is. He looks like an Easter egg in boots.

I played Hendry in the semi-final of the World Championship in 2002, and it was a brilliant game, 12-12, and then I went 13-12 up and I had a red with the rest. I was shaking, and I missed the red, and he won five frames on the trot to beat me 17-13. I came off thinking he raised his game when I bottled it. The closer he got to the winning line, the more he went for his shots, the more aggressive he became.

That’s what made Hendry unique. Even if you look at a great talent like Judd Trump, he sometimes plays more of a percentage game when he gets into a winning position, turning down shots that he would normally go for. He has a tendency to screw back to baulk just in case he misses when the pressure’s on. Hendry was the opposite, and that was really intimidating. He was a train with no brakes, and at his peak matches were over almost before they’d started.

The difference between Hendry and Judd Trump, as he is now, is that Hendry went for it when it mattered. Hendry was 18 when he won his first world-ranking event and 21 when he won his first world title, and his record is unequalled. Judd is a good player, and he has won the UK, but he’s got a long way to go before he starts even to glance at Hendry’s record. Selby is a very good match player. Ding is a good player, but I think he’s got a mental issue that stops him winning as many tournaments as he should do. I love Ding. In the Masters in 2008, he burst into tears when he was playing me in the final. I hated seeing him like that. He’s a fantastic talent, but it’s all about doing it in the final stages of the big matches, and that’s where Hendry would have anybody. Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and darts player Phil Taylor are the only three sportsmen you could put in that bracket; when the pressure was really on, they went up a gear.

Tennis heroes:

Roger Federer & Serena Williams

Roger Federer is another of my heroes. It’s the ease and grace with which he plays. Look at his rivals – Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal and Andy Murray are all amazingly good players, but they rely more on their athleticism so eventually their body will break down. Federer played so much within himself that he avoided injuries. He never spent much time on the court – it was always 6-0, 6-1, 6-2, and it was effortless. In all sport, it’s a huge advantage if you can kill a game off early and conserve energy. He’s light on his feet, incredibly graceful. He’s the only non-grunting tennis champion I can remember. Even now, when he’s past his peak, he still gets to semi-finals and finals of grand slams, which is an amazing achievement. To be ranked third or fourth in the world at 32 is another great achievement. And he has broken so many records throughout his career – more than 300 weeks at number one in the world, a gob-smacking 237 consecutive weeks at number one from 2004 to 2008, 17 grand slam victories and (hopefully) still counting, seven Wimbledon titles (along with Pete Sampras).

He never bottled it. Even when he got beaten, they’d nearly always be great matches with both players giving their best. When he lost to Rafa Nadal at Wimbledon in 2008 over five huge sets it was one of the greatest matches ever.

Tennis is my favourite sport to watch on telly – you get all the angles, the rallies. Golf is the worst to watch on the telly. They hit a ball and if you’re lucky you see it land, and that’s it. I like watching boxing, too. But really I watch for the players, not the sport. I’ll watch Federer, Djokovic, Serena Williams, but not just anyone.

I love Serena Williams: she’s the queen. What a record she’s got, too. For me, it’s not just about ability or style, it’s about maintaining that standard over a career. That’s what makes a player truly great. Serena has had so many problems with injury and illness, and personal tragedy in her life when her sister was killed, and then there were the critics who said that the Williams sisters were just part-timers and didn’t really care about the game (like they’d said about me) and each time she would battle back and prove them wrong. Perhaps I shouldn’t separate them – the Williams sisters are heroes of mine, Serena and Venus.

But if I had to choose it would obviously be Serena – so much power and passion, never knowing when she’s beaten. Also she’s like me in some ways. I think she’s a lovely girl who doesn’t like conflict, but sometimes finds herself in the middle of fights when she has been wronged. I always think of that time at the US Open final when she threatened to stuff the ball down the lines (wo)man’s throat. Well, obviously that ain’t a good thing to do, but think of the context – she had just wrongly called a foot fault, Serena was one set down, 6-5 down in the second set, 15-30. So the wrong call took her to 15-40, match point down. No wonder she went bonkers. Don’t get me wrong – ‘I swear to God I’m fucking going to take this ball and shove it down your fucking mouth’ is not a measured response. Definitely worth a bit of a fine. But it just shows how much it matters to her. Serena is 32, and still miles ahead of any of her rivals in the world. In 2013, she regained her world number one spot, and in doing so became the oldest number one in the history of the sport. Perhaps this is even more incredible than Federer’s achievement (though, having said that, he’s had the greater competition throughout his career). In 2003, she won the Serena slam – holding all four grand slams simultaneously. Serena has won 16 singles grand slam titles at the time of writing (plus 13 doubles and 2 mixed doubles), and my bet is as you’re reading this she’s already won more. Phenomenal. And she scrubs up nicely.

Running heroes:

Haile Gebrselassie, Tirunesh Dibaba, Kennenisa Bekele &

Mo Farah

As for runners, I loved Haile Gebrselassie. What a story and what a man. Like so many of the great Ethiopians, he learnt his sport by running miles to and from school every day. He was one of 10 kids brought up by his parents in the hills of Asala, 160 miles south of Addis Ababa, and in the dry season he ran six miles to school and back every day. Things weren’t so easy in the rainy season. Then he couldn’t take a short cut across a river bed, and his round journey became 15 miles. Haile ran his first marathon when he was 15.

He’s an amazing role model – for the people of Ethiopia and the rest of the world. He won successive Olympic gold medals at 10,000 metres in Atlanta in 1996 then in Sydney in 2000. Perhaps even more amazing, he just continued running into his thirties and in 2008, at the age of 35, he broke the world record for a marathon in Berlin, recording 2 hours 3 minutes and 57 seconds. He broke his own record by 27 seconds. Incredible. Gebrselassie then went on to become a role model as a businessman, running hotels, gyms and garages, and giving hope to so many Ethiopians.

He grew up in absolute poverty and is now worth tens of millions of pounds. He gets at least £250,000 for every city marathon he runs in. But running has never become work to him. He just loves it, and every morning he puts on his shorts and runs into work. Now there’s a man who’s got the buzz.

The fella’s only 5’ 5” and he’s got superhuman strength and stamina. Apparently, he once ran 60 kilometres – he claimed it was just a nice little trot that took him four hours. Mad. Like my other heroes he dominated his sport for years. Decades in his case.

Kennenisa Bekele is also an incredible distance runner – which makes Mo Farah’s achievement in beating him at the 2012 Olympics in London even greater. Bekele comes from this tiny village about 80 kilometres from Addis Ababa called Bekoji where nearly all the young kids dream of escaping poverty by becoming runners.

They all go running at the crack of dawn, coached by this little fella called Sentayehu Eshatu, a retired teacher, who has trained half a dozen gold medallists, including Bekele, Tirunesh Dibaba, Deratu Tulu, Fatima Roba and Kennenisa’s younger brother, Tariku Bekele. Kennenisa won silver and gold respectively at 5,000 and 10,000 metres in Athens in 2004, then followed up with double gold in Beijing. Ridiculous.

What I love about Kennenisa is the ease with which he raced. If they wanted to go fast, he’d go fast, if they wanted fast laps then slow laps, he was happy with that. It didn’t matter how the others wanted to run the race, he was always aware of what was going on, and knew where the threat was and knew when it was his time to go; and at his peak when he did go nobody was going with him. He didn’t even bother looking back. He knew nobody was going to get past him. That’s what separated him from the other runners. I watched him once in the world cross-country championships and his shoe came undone. He was in the lead, and had to stop and put his shoe on; it took him about 20 to 30 seconds, the others overtook him, then he just made his way back through the pack with such calm determination and won the race. I thought, he’s given everybody a 30-second start and still won the race so how much more has he got left in the tank? That was when I thought, this fella’s special. You just knew he’d be able to pull them back and maintain his pace to outsprint them at the end. And to think Mo Farah beat him at the 2012 London Olympics . . .

Mo Farah’s feat in taking double gold at 5,000 and 10,000 metres off him in London is impossible to overstate. What an achievement. He was only the fifth man ever to pull off the double. To be honest, I didn’t think he had a chance beforehand, but the work he put in, training at altitude in Kenya, leaving his family back home, giving everything, really paid off. He transformed himself as a runner through sheer discipline and hard work to become the first British man ever to win double Olympic gold in these events.

Mo tells amazing stories about how he walked away from his honeymoon when an ash cloud interrupted their flight back from Zanzibar and he told his wife that she and their daughter would have to make their own way home while he went back and trained in Kenya. But that’s what it takes to be a great world champion. He’s incredibly cool under pressure – and not just on the track. He became the first contestant, celebrity or member of the public to win the jackpot and beat the Cube in the TV game show The Cube, and won £250,000 for charity. The Cube is all about pressure – contestants have to stand in a 4 × 4 × 4-metre Perspex cube and complete challenges. It’s claustrophobic just looking at it, never mind being inside it.

In 2009 I met Tirunesh Dibaba and was star-struck. She’s one of the greatest distance women runners ever, and also comes from Bekoji in Ethiopia. In 2008, at the Beijing Olympics, she won double gold at 5,000 and 10,000 metres, and in London 2012 she held on to her 10,000-metres title – that made her the first woman to win back-to-back Olympic gold at 10,000 metres – and this was after she had been out for 16 months with injury in 2010–11.

I met her in a hotel in Birmingham where she had had to pull out of the Aviva Grand Prix because of injury. We had a lovely little chat and I showed her my weekly running schedule to see what she thought. She said she couldn’t believe the miles I was putting in. I had so many questions for her – what pace she trains at, how many track sessions she does, how many laps, how she psyches out her rivals. I wrote down all my questions before meeting her because I was worried I’d be so nervous in front of her that I’d forget everything I wanted to ask.

She’s a lovely girl and suggested I go and train with her in Ethiopia. I’d love to give it a go.

Golf hero:

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods is relentless. He’s such a competitor. People say he was the first billionaire sportsman. He became a business, a brand, yet he retained that focus to be the best he can be. He’s not won a Masters for five years, but for me he’s still up there. The exposés about his private life coincided with his loss of form. Before that he’d won the US Open on one leg when he was injured. That’s how good he was. He had that air of invincibility. Then there was the time away from sport; he had the horrors in his personal life and other players caught up with him. You read the comments about him and realise there are a lot of Tiger haters out there, but that always surprises me. Even when he smashes his club and spits on the floor I still love him; that’s part of his desire to win. He’s just psyching himself up, and when you’re out there you just become a different animal. I don’t think people realise that you’re not always conscious of what you’re doing out there. Tiger the golfer is different from Tiger the person. It’s the same with all the world’s great sportsmen. They give off that air that they’re the boss, and Tiger’s no different.

Darts hero:

Phil Taylor

Phil Taylor is the greatest sportsman in any sport. Sixteen world titles: who gets near that? He did me the honour of coming to watch the final at Sheffield in 2013. The geeza’s awesome. He never looks as if he’s going to lose. Does he ever not hit a treble? He’s unbelievable. Snooker and darts have one thing in common – sums. But that’s the only thing. I would say snooker is closer to golf. Both are still-ball sports. If the ball goes off line, you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself, whereas with all other ball sports it’s more reactive – you have to react to what the opponent or team-mate is doing to the ball and you’re on the move with the ball. With golf and snooker, everything points back to you.

Coaching hero

Ray Reardon was a great coach for me. He was a funny mix – so relaxed in some ways, so demanding in others. He was, like: ‘Go into the club, have a little practice, get out your cue and if you don’t feel like it put it away, have a cup of tea, chill out, relax, come back to the table when you’re feeling better, yessssss.’ Ray is very funny. ‘Go and play some golf, you’ve got all the time in the world, come back later.’

That was a pep talk from Ray. Fantastic. The funniest man I’ve ever met. Ray is my hero, the king, I love him. Perhaps he should be a snooker hero – after all, he won the World Championship six times – but he’s more of a coaching hero and all-round-person hero to me. He is a father figure, granddad figure to me. I felt that man loved me, and that was so important to me.

I worked with him in 2004, the second time I won the World Championship. Ray taught me things that only a mathematics genius could know. I adopted his philosophy, and for a time I played every shot Ray Reardon would have played. The games became long, drawn-out matches. I became like Mark Selby, the Torturer. Pre-Ray, whenever I played a match I’d come off at the interval (after four frames) and look at my screen at the other matches and see 1-1, 1-0, and think, Christ, they’re going to be there all night. But when I started working with Ray I’d come in at the interval, and I’d look at my screen and they’d already be back out there playing, 4-2, 4-3. And I’d think, what’s going on here? I was torturing my opponents. I became a nightmare to play against.

It was a new way of playing, and I understood why that game was getting me results and why I was now being classed as the complete player, but it felt weird. I wasn’t blowing players away, I was outtacticing them, outthinking them. Ray would think so many shots ahead it was incredible. He once told me that if you get a respotted black, it would go like this: he plays this shot, you play that, he plays this, you play this, he plays that, and on it went. Anyway, one day I thought I’d try this against John Parrott and it was an eight-or nine-shot sequence and Ray was absolutely right. That’s how clever that geeza is. He played snooker like chess. Ray knew what shot he’d be playing in four shots time, whereas I’d just go bang red, split ’em open, make a mistake, game over. Ray taught me how to play snooker like chess.

Did I like playing like that? Well, I won the world title and learnt a huge amount along the way. But after a year and a half with Ray I felt I needed to get aggressive again and do it my way. I knew I had his game to fall back on, and it gave me confidence. I could go back to playing aggressively, and then I had the more defensive game to resort to when things weren’t going well.

In the end, though, Ray got a bit too much for me. I couldn’t cope with the play-this-shot, play-that-shot, and if I didn’t play a shot the way he wanted he’d get the hump. It put a lot of pressure on me and I felt I couldn’t please him. Every time I made a mistake he’d be going: ‘Ohhhhh!’ That’s how I felt anyway. He was a harsh taskmaster. I’d be telling him my hips aren’t right, my stance isn’t right, my head’s not right and he’d just say: ‘Oh no, don’t worry about that, put the ball here, put the ball there, don’t worry about that.’ And I’d say: ‘Well, I am worried about my stance and my head because if I can get those right potting the balls is easy, but you’re asking me to do something I can’t do at the moment because my cue action is so shit.’

He couldn’t get his head round that. He just said I was unplayable. ‘You’re unbeatable, Ron. You pot better than anybody and you’ve got the defensive game.’ It might have been true theoretically, but if your head’s not screwed on right it doesn’t count for anything. He used to say: ‘Once I make you impregnable you’ll be unplayable.’ He was right to an extent, but I suppose the bottom line is I like to play it my way.

A friend who was sitting next to Ray in a match said to me afterwards: ‘If he could have got out there and played the shot for you he would have.’ And that put pressure on me. In the end I was playing terribly in the UK Championships against Mark King, and I started going for everything, thinking this will give Ray the hump. I knew he’d go mad. I came in at the interval and I was going to say: ‘Ray, drop me out, I ain’t having it’, and as I came in I said to my mate: ‘Where’s Ray?’

‘He’s gone home,’ he said. ‘He got up and walked out of the crowd and went home.’

That was the last time we worked together, and we haven’t talked about it since.

I was shocked when I discovered Ray had gone. But he knew what had happened. He knew he’d done my head in, and just went. But we still love each other. I don’t speak to him much, but I know I’m welcome to go down to his house in Torquay any time and he’ll put me up. The time I spent with him was one of the best 18 months I’ve had with anyone.

His one-liners, his little laughs, his manner, were so funny. He’d slaughter people in the nicest way. You’d listen to him and think, he’s ruined that person but he’s done it with a smile on his face, and you’d think, I wish I had that skill! And it is a skill, make no mistake. Just before a match, when people came up to us, he’d say: ‘Right, shop’s open. No more talking! See you later! Bye bye!’ He’d say it to everyone. He took no prisoners, and I was the opposite. I’d think, how can you say that to people, but he’d be like: ‘No. Shop’s open, time for business, shop closes later, then it’s time for fun.’ Basically, fuck off, get out of the way, we’re here to do business, ta-ta, but always with a smile on his face. And he was right to say that.

I saw Ray after I won the World Championship in 2012. He was sitting just behind me in the crowd, and I was winning 17-11, one frame short of victory, when I caught him. He just gave me a little look, and I thought, blimey, he’s watching me. Pressure! But he was so happy when I won.

Ray couldn’t stand Scouse John, who’s one of my best mates. I think he misread John. Every time Scouse John has been at Sheffield I’ve won because he makes me laugh. Ray didn’t realise that, and he got the hump with him. John used to call him Raj, not Ray. It drove him mad.

One day we were in Brighton, having breakfast. Ray’s a class dude: smoked salmon, poached eggs, he’s chatting to the girls who love him, he’s immaculate. Every day we’re sitting there, overlooking the sea for breakfast, and it’s all well classy. Then one day we get there and there’s a camper van in front of us – Scouse John’s camper van. And Ray’s going: ‘What’s this? What’s this? Where’s the view gone?’ I can’t say it’s Scouse John’s van because he’d just go: ‘Move it. What’s he doing here?’ So he goes to the woman in charge and says: ‘Can you find out whose van this is, and get rid of it?’ She comes back and says: ‘It’s Mr O’Sullivan’s.’ Typical Scouse John that is.

Even though he ended up walking out on me, I like to remember the good times with Ray. He’s a gentleman. Snooker brainwise, he’s the best coach I’ve worked with. There have been a few other decent ones. Frank Adamson, an old boy from Bristol, was good. He’s around 80 and has supported me massively over the years. Frank looks at light and lines, and I couldn’t be more different. So in the end, to spin his head out I said, here, look at this, Frank, stood on one leg, played it left-handed and started rifling balls in. I have to prove to people sometimes that what they’re saying is not the only way.

In a way the best coach I’ve ever had has been myself. I’ve always learnt from people when I’ve watched them. I can watch a player and know why the ball’s doing this or that, and I’ll take that in and say, okay, I’ll use that. I did it with Steve Davis and now I do it with all the youngsters on the circuit today.

Rock friend hero:

Antony Genn

Antony used to be with Pulp as a kid then went on to form The Hours. He has been like a brother, top mate, heart of gold, one of the funniest geezas you’ll meet in your life, and he can eat chocolate for Britain. I love him to bits. He’s a bit of a sensitive soul, like me – we take things to heart. He’s a northerner. I love northerners.

It was 2008 when I first met him. I won the World Championship, but was in a terrible state personally – splitting up with Jo and caning it. I was incredibly fit – but I was also abusing my body like there was no tomorrow. I met Antony at Sheffield, but we didn’t really get chance to chat. He was with Damien Hirst, and they both seemed like nice fellas – not that I knew anything about them. We swapped numbers, and a couple of weeks later met for a bit to eat at the Ivy. We had some dinner, and I was looking at these two blokes sipping their Perrier water and Antony was telling me all the addiction horrors he had been through – that I was going through. Maybe he was on a mission, and could tell I was in pieces. To be honest, he looked so fit and together I didn’t really believe him.

A few weeks later I was in a terrible state at my mum’s house – couldn’t move, fever, sick, pissing blood. The doctors initially thought it might be my kidneys, and put me in a hospital ward full of old men wearing colostomy bags. They did tests, and my kidneys were fine. None of the doctors could work out what was wrong with me, but I knew – it was payback time for not looking after myself.

When I started to feel better, the first thing I did was call up Antony and ask him how he got clean. We started going back to NA meetings, but I couldn’t really cope with them. So Antony said, no worries, why not just hang out with me. And that’s how we got close. We’d meet for lunch or dinner, just chat, there was no temptation because he didn’t drink or take drugs. He and Damien showed me a different way of living, and since then I have been clean. I’ll stay clean for them because I don’t want to lose my friends, and I don’t want to be around them if I’m wrecked, so they have become my motivation. Whatever state I’m in I can pour my heart out to Antony. If I’m in a state I know I can ring him and he’ll always some say come round, there’s a bed for you at mine.

Artist hero:

Damien Hirst

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.’