9
‘Ran hard, pace felt fast, slowed down at halfway for a bit then worked hard up the hills.’
I’d run a bit at school. Everyone had to do the old cross-country, and a bit of sprinting for sports day. But I can’t say I liked it. It was Dad who got me running regularly when I was 12, and then it became even more of a chore. This was way before we struck up our deal about leaving school early so long as I kept disciplined and did my daily three-milers. He was always a fit fella, with the football and going down the gym regularly, boxing and skipping, and maybe he looked at me, saw all the shit I was eating, and thought, if he doesn’t watch it he’s going to be a right lardy fucker. Whatever: from an early age he told me to get myself out for a regular jog. Dad wasn’t the kind of person you argued with. He was dead right, of course – by the age of 10 I was already spending a lot of my waking life in snooker halls, and you needed a balance to that. Not only would I become a little chubster eating crisps and chocolate, but stuck in those the horrible, dark, smoky rooms I’d start to look like Dracula for lack of fresh air. Dad instilled in me the belief that exercise and fresh air meant feeling better, and feeling better meant playing better.
The first time I played snooker was on my cousin Glenn’s table. His parents, Peter and Maureen, my aunt and uncle, had a little table at their house in Orpington, Kent. When I was over there I’d hit some balls on it, wasn’t very good, but I enjoyed it, and Dad bought me a table for Christmas. I was seven years old, and it was my first table. Dad got it fitted a few days before Christmas, but I wasn’t allowed to play till Christmas Day. He and his mates were playing on it, and I kept going to look at it. I just wanted to hit a few balls on it, but he was, like: ‘No, just wait till Christmas, then it’s yours!’ It was a lovely table. Little Ronnie now plays on a similar one, and when I see him it reminds me of my young self – head just popping over the table. I’ve given Ron a few lessons, told him what’s right and wrong. In a way I’d hate him to play snooker professionally because it’s such a mentally tough sport. I’d much rather he played tennis or golf and was out in the fresh air. But if he decided snooker was what he wanted to do I’d back him all the way, and I do believe he’s got a talent. I watch him play, his bridge hand, the little things he does, and I think he’s got the natural hand-eye coordination. But I hope he doesn’t take it up professionally.
Playing snooker’s a horrible life in some ways. For one, you’re told to keep your emotions in check so you don’t talk a lot, there’s no interaction and you can spend five hours without saying a word. You learn to become a recluse, an automaton. Look at a lot of snooker players: they shut down and walk around like zombies. You can spot a snooker player a mile away. You can see the character in most of the players, too – they’re not big conversationalists, they’re quiet, introverted. And I wouldn’t want little Ronnie to be like that. I’d like him to be more outgoing, confident, playing in a band, anything like that, interacting with the world.
Snooker is a lonely sport, too. You have to work lots of things out for yourself. You’d rarely go to anybody and ask for help because that’s seen as a sign of weakness. You never want to share what’s going on in your mind with competitors – having said that, there are times when I overshare! – just in case they psychologically get one over you. Maybe it’s the same in every sport.
When I was a little boy, Mum and Dad were away working most of the time, but we were still a tight unit of three, until my sister Danielle came along when I was seven – then we became a tight unit of four.
From an early age, Mum and Dad left me with other people as they put in the hours – au pairs, friends, neighbours. There was one au pair who terrified me. I can’t remember why, but I was in total fear of her. That’s the only bit of my childhood I look back on negatively. The rest was good. Part of the time I lived with another family who were just round the corner. They had two girls and a son, and that’s where I stayed most of the time. Again, it was because Mum and Dad were working all hours. I’d sleep over at their house or, sometimes, the girl would take me back to my house and stay over with me. They were like older sisters – they had already left school while I was still in primary school. So even though I haven’t got older brothers and sisters, it felt as if I did have.
Mum and Dad were young parents. When I was six, they were still only in their mid-twenties, just beginning to get on in life. Mum’s family had quite a successful ice-cream business in Birmingham, a load of vans, and they tried living there. But Dad couldn’t hack it, so he came back to London and got a flat, and as soon as he got a flat Mum came down with me. I was 18 months old, and my parents had no money at the time. Because she was Sicilian and she had married an Englishman, Mum’s family decided she had dishonoured the family.
They thought Dad was lazy and didn’t want to work, and Mum’s family couldn’t stand him back then. They would sit there and talk about him in Italian in front of him, saying: ‘Look at him, he’s useless, all he does is eat all the food, sits on the settee, won’t drive the ice-cream vans, he’s lazy.’
Dad was sitting there, eating his pasta, thinking he’s having a wonderful time, and Mum would be sticking up for him in Italian and then she’d turn to him and say: ‘Right, come on, Ron, we’re going!’
And he’d go: ‘Why? What’s the matter? I’m having a great time here.’
He said it was only later on that he found out they didn’t like him. But Mum’s family did grow to love him as a son.
Mum’s always been a grafter – old-school. And Dad’s still lazy, despite building up a business. He’s never been overly keen on a day’s work, although he was forced to do one when I was young. Mum just said to him: ‘Okay, you’ve got to go and earn some money now. All this playing football and that, I don’t see no money coming in. Go and get a proper job and bring some money in!’ So that’s why they ended up working so hard.
First of all, he was cleaning cars with Mum – Mum was doing the ins and he was cleaning the outs. Then she started wait-ressing in the evening, and he got into the porn game. The porn business suited him down to the ground. Mum was the one who gave him the little shove he needed, and once he got a taste for it he thought he’d found the dream job – instead of sitting behind a desk, he was up the West End, having a laugh with the lads. He just landed a job working for someone in the first place. He was pretty good at selling, pretty good with figures, and they liked him.
The police were raiding a lot of the sex shops at the time, and the people running the shops got a bit bottly and worried – they didn’t want to go to prison, and they thought if they were nicked under the old obscenity laws they’d end up doing time. But Dad just thought, there’s good money in this game and if I get six months or a year it’s worth it. He never went down for running the sex shops – but he did end up doing a lot longer than that in the end.
He was selling pornographic magazines. He told me that a lot of people would put stars on the vaginas and the penises so when they went to court they’d go: ‘Yes, it’s obscene, but there’s a star to cover it’, but Dad left the vaginas and arses exposed, and began putting stars on elbows and armpits and feet and toes because he said he found them obscene! These were the days before sex shops were licensed. His brothers have still got a few shops left in London’s West End called Harmony, but Mum and Dad are out of the game now. I think Mum got frightened when she got banged up. She did six or seven months, and she never wanted to go through that stress again. She thought she’d rather take less money and be out of the firing line. She’s chilling out, going on holidays and having a good time these days.
I had a snooker room built for me at the end of the garden when I was 11. It was a huge room with the table, obviously, a settee, a telly, and I’d spend 10 to 11 hours a day in there just hitting balls. Now I’m not sure that’s healthy for somebody starting out in life but then again to be successful it’s necessary to go through that.
There’s that old cliché that being good at snooker is a sign of a misspent youth. It’s funny that people never say it about golf or football or cricket. But there is an element of truth in it. Why would you spend all those hours in the dark when you could be outside in the sun? I was such an early starter. By the age of 10 I was making centuries, at 12 I won my first pro-am tournament and when I was 15 I made my first maxi. In snooker terms, I was ridiculously precocious. I don’t think Stephen Hendry began playing till he was 13 or 14 and Steve Davis was 14 when he started the game. Maybe it’s not that they were late starters, it’s just that I was a ridiculously early starter.
I soon discovered that snooker messes with your head more than any sport. There’s no other sport where you just have to sit down till your opponent has finished their business. You’re sitting there knowing there’s nothing you can do. But in a way there issomething you can do. If you play to your potential you definitely have an effect on what your opponent does. So although physically you can’t do anything, if you dominate the game when you are at the table it does have an effect on your opponent. In some ways that is even more satisfying because you can see him making mistake after mistake, unravelling in front of you. Even though you are not getting punched in the face, or punching your opponent in the face, you are bullying your opponents in some respects.
Having said that, I think I’d rather be punched in the face than bullied on the snooker table. There are a couple of players who have bullied me on the table – sometimes I’ve come away from playing John Higgins and Stephen Hendry feeling I’ve been battered. There is nothing worse than sitting in the chair, at the Crucible or any big venue, for eight or nine frames taking the punishment, not potting a ball, watching your opponent clock up the scores. You feel embarrassed, you start questioning your ability. But in a sick way for many fans this is the joy of snooker – watching someone sit in his chair, shrivelling, falling apart. There’s a sadistic pleasure people get out of it. It’s total punishment.
When you go through matches like that you come off and feel devastated but you just have to pick yourself up and get on with it. But it’s not easy – you collect a lot of mental scars during a career. When you’re younger you are fearless and just go for your shots, but as you grow older and take a few beatings along the way, you begin to question your game. When I started people would say to me: ‘Oh, it’s alright for you, you’ve got no fear, just wait till you’re a bit older and you miss a few and people start punishing you.’ They were right.
When I won my first tournament against Stephen Hendry I remember feeling scared because I was playing my hero, and there was no chance I was going to win. I ended up beating him, and now, when I watch myself playing then, I see someone who looks as if he’s playing with no fear. I think, wow! that kid there looked so confident, so assured.
When I was 10, I had fear but I never showed it. I’d go out and think, you can’t show your fear. Beforehand I’d think, I can’t go out there and play because I’m too nervous but then the performance I put in was really good. I didn’t look nervous. Sometimes I look back at more recent matches, when I know I’ve been in pieces, and yet I look really calm out there. So what you’re feeling and what you’re projecting out there can be two entirely different things. I always wonder where that comes from. I know my confidence has been affected over the years by doubt and by trying to perfect my game, but on the outside it often doesn’t show.
That frustrates me at times. I’d rather somebody came up to me and said: ‘It looks as if you’re struggling out there, Ron; you’re doing this wrong and doing that wrong.’ But nobody’s ever felt able to say that to me. They just say, well, you look great, you’re playing great, you look calm, it doesn’t show. And I just think, are they lying to me? I would hate to see little Ronnie struggle like I have.
But I didn’t always think like this, of course. By the time I was 10 I already had it in my mind that snooker was what I wanted to do. I didn’t have time for anything else. I loved playing. Competing. I used to get excited about the thought of going away at the weekend to play in junior events. I’d get a buzz out of just going down the club and playing. I just loved it; you couldn’t keep me off the table. I’d be playing hour after hour, player after player. I never wanted to stop.
Winning was never important to me until I got a few victories under my belt. At 12, I was making 20 grand a year. Unbelievable, really. When I think about it I was earning more than most adults. I was a bit of a freak at that age. The other players didn’t believe I was only 12 – I was already shaving, and they’d go, look at the size of him. By the time I was 14 I had a hairy chest.
The reason I was making so much money was because I was winning proper amateur events. A lot of these kids would win the odd junior event so they’d make £300–£400. But on the amateur circuit, where the prize money was £1,000 or £1,500 or even two and a half grand, I was regularly winning. I was mixing it with the top amateurs and that’s why I was earning such good money.
A lot of the adults didn’t like it. The dads would look at me and think: ‘Ah no, my little boy’s got to play him!’ And it was often a mauling. It would be 3-0, they wouldn’t pot a ball, it would be over and done with in about half an hour.
I was merciless. I never felt sorry for anybody. When I was a kid, the killer instinct was drummed into me by Dad, just like Ray Reardon did later on – you never let them off the hook, always nail them, when they want snookers, you get the snookers. When you shake hands you shake and you mean it; none of that floppy wet-fish rubbish; look into the man’s eyes. That wasn’t in me naturally, Dad instilled it into me. I remember shaking some old girl’s hand and I just squeezed it accidentally, and she went aaaagh!
By nature I think I’m a gentle man. Dad moulded me into what he thought I needed to be. I probably would have been even more ruthless had he not gone away. But when he was inside I found myself, and became much closer to the person I naturally was. I haven’t got the killer instinct to want to dominate the world. I enjoy the game, but I’ve not got that thing in me where I’ve got to win eight titles, break this record, or get revenge on the last player to beat me. It’s not my way of thinking. Having said that, I think I’m still ruthless when I’m on the table because then it’s just me and the game I’m trying to master.
Dad thinks we’re very different people. He knows there’s a lot of stuff I’m just not bothered about. He’s driven to succeed; driven to want to be the best. He only loves winners. Messi’s a god, everyone else is shit, that kind of thing. ‘They call him great, he ain’t great, he’s fucking shit, look at him, cunt, shit. Shit. What are they all talking about, he’s shiiiiiiiiit.’ He’s funny when he goes off on one – like Peter Cook in an old ‘Derek and Clive’ sketch. I listen to him and think, well, is he right or wrong, and by my reckoning the player he’s going on about is playing for Arsenal or Tottenham and obviously isn’t shit. He’s a harsh critic. It was drummed into me from an early age to have that mentality, but it just wasn’t me. Often I’m so quiet, so withdrawn, that I just turn my phone off for days to get away from everyone and everything. As soon as I switch it on, I see emails and texts and I don’t know how to cope with it. It scares me. I don’t want it, I just want to keep my life as simple as I can, which is hard. And I’m finding that now because everyone wants a piece of you.
When I played the adults some got annoyed losing to me, and some loved it. I remember this Canadian fella, Marcel Gauvreau; he was about number 30 in the world and he turned up at the pro-am, and I was due to play him, and I thought, god, he’s a legend. I’d been watching him on the telly. He’d got through to the quarter-finals of the Mercantile Credit Classic; he didn’t win events but he was a regular quarters, last-16 man. And I played him in a quarter-final at Stevenage and this was a major pro-am – about 128 players, anyone who was anyone was there. Steve James, who was ranked number eight in the world, was playing, so we’re talking quality.
I played Marcel in the quarter-finals and I had an 80, a 90 and 130, and I beat him 3-2. When I got a frame off him, I thought I’d done well. When I got two frames off him, I thought, fuck, if he beats me 3-2, I can go back to my local snooker club and say I took two frames off Marcel Gauvreau. That was how much of a scalp he was. And I ended up beating him 3-2.
I came off the table and he went: ‘Hey, man, that kid’s unbelievable! He’s made a hundred and thirty and a ninety. Who is this motherfucker?’
And I was like, wow, because he became my fan. After he played me he wouldn’t leave me alone. Every pro-am I turned up at he’d come up to me and go: ‘This is the kid! This is the kid!’ and I’d think, what’s he on, this geeza, is he mad or what? I could never see what he thought was so special about me, but I was just glad to make a friend. I’d love to know where Marcel is now.
But a lot of the adults hated playing me, and hated getting beaten by me even more. Many players are driven to playing for the wrong reasons, and they’ll do anything for a result. I know sport is about winning trophies and getting silverware, but I’ve always been more of a believer in playing for the spirit of the game. I really believe that if you took all money out of the game, it would be much fairer and more sporting. It would be a nicer sporting planet; having said that, though, I’d be a lot poorer.
There was a lot of jealousy from the older guys. On a couple of occasions I owed them money. I owed Nicky Lazarus a tenner, and his dad was Mark Lazarus, who played for QPR. They were quite a hard-nut family in Romford, and I owed Nicky the money because I was into fruit machines. I was shit scared of him. Every time I went to tournaments I avoided him. He was probably 20, 10 years older than me, always had a nice bird with him, so he was one of the dudes on the circuit. He was a good player.
Nicky caught me one day and said: ‘Oi, you give me my fucking money back! You think you can get away with it, but my dad knows more villains than your dad.’ I thought, shit! He’s really coming after me. And it was all over a tenner. Maybe he was showing off his alpha-male qualities.
Without Dad I don’t think I would have got anywhere in snooker. I think I would have got in a lot of trouble, probably been banned from tournaments. Dad was good at punishing me, getting me out of bother and sending messages to certain people at snooker tournaments not to lead me on because I was so easily led. He’d tell people to keep an eye on me because I needed to be watched. I was a little fucker, and Dad had told them: ‘If he misbehaves make sure you tell me.’ I know they all reported back to him because he found out everything I’d been up to.
I was gambling on the fruit machines and when I was eight or nine I was swearing a lot. When I missed a shot down the club, I’d be: ‘Fucking cunt, fucking this, fucking that’, and I’d be smashing my cues. I was terrible. I hated missing the ball and I’d just get the hump and become so angry with myself. I got banned from Pontins when I was 10, and of course Dad found out about that, too.
I threw a beer glass full of Coke across the ballroom when I was being chased – I wasn’t throwing it at anybody, I just smashed it on the floor so the fella behind me would stop chasing me. Eddie Manning was a bit of a lary geeza from Leicester, always had a suntan. Fast Eddie they used to call him; he’d have all the birds and he was having a go at me. He’d started poking me and taking the piss, bullying me. I threw the glass in his direction. Splat! He went: ‘You cunt’, and started chasing me. I still had the glass in my hand so I threw it on the floor, obviously it smashed, and that wasn’t right. But then they claimed I’d throw a glass at an old lady, which I wouldn’t do in a million years, so I got banned for that.
Even though I got in trouble all the time, Dad was my safety net. He was a tough disciplinarian, and when I’d done wrong I knew I was for it. He’d humiliate me in front of my mum, his dad, his friends – verbally more than anything, intimidation. When I got banned from Pontins he called round the snooker player Mark King and his dad, Bill King. Dad had paid for the holiday, paid for all our spending money, and had said to Bill: ‘Just look after him, make sure he doesn’t misbehave and if he does just give me a call.’ So we went there, and I got banned.
But when we went up to the disciplinary hearing, the report was written by the snooker referee John Williams and he said that on the Monday Bill King came up to him and said, you’ve got to get hold of Ronnie because he’s messing around. So it turned out that the man who was looking after me now appeared to be grassing me up to the tournament official. Dad invited Mark and Bill round to our house to explain what had happened and Mark said: ‘They were calling Ronnie Mighty Mouth’, and just shit stirring. I knew from Dad’s face that I was going to be in shtuck when they left.
Dad gave me the slipper treatment. I couldn’t sit down for a couple of days because my bum was so sore. Good old-fashioned put-you-in-your-place stuff; it probably didn’t do me any harm. Not that I thought so at the time.
I was quite independent from an early age because of the snooker and also because of Mum and Dad working. I was left to go away by myself a lot. I was given petrol money, money for spends etc. from the age of 11. A lot of kids would travel with their parents, even when they were 17 or 18. I’d just turn up on my own. I loved it. I could play the fruit machines, mess about; if I got beat I could have a laugh with some of the older lads. I was buzzing. Those weekends were great.
Not surprisingly, I paid less and less attention to school work, and left school without taking exams. I had got on well with most of the teachers. I think they were all curious about me, and the snooker. When I was 10 or 11 my headmaster, Mr Challon, heard that I had got £450 for winning a competition, and he didn’t believe it.
‘Ronnie, is it true you’ve just won £450 in a snooker tournament?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Can you bring in the trophy and cheque to show me?’ He was particularly interested in seeing the cheque.
I got home and told Mum. ‘Mum, is it okay if I take in my trophy and cheque to school tomorrow. The head wants to see it.’
She smiled. ‘Course, you can.’
So I put them in my school bag, got called into his office, he had his mate there, and he went: ‘Show me this trophy!’ So I got it out, and he said: ‘Well done! Very well done!’ I liked Mr Challon. The teachers were supportive of me. They knew my mind was fixed on being a snooker player and as long as I went to school they didn’t push me about exams.
I was a bit of a loner. I didn’t have a bigger brother or a bigger sister. A lot of my friends were in my year – George, my best mate, was like a brother to me. George is into computers and designs football websites. No one at school had a friendship like me and George – we were inseparable. He wasn’t into snooker. Football was his game. George was a bit of a freak, like me. He had great big legs, and he’d get the ball and fly down the wing and he’d hit it and it would scream into the net, and everybody would go, there’s no way he’s only 12 years old. He was shaped like a man.
Dad wanted me to make a career out of snooker. From a very young age he instilled that dedication in me. He was always trying to steer me down the right path. I suppose back then he was moulding me into a successful sportsman. He’s a bright man, and he knew the messages he was trying to put into my head. A lot of the kids I grew up with were mollycoddled: ‘My boy this, my boy that.’ My dad never gave me compliments. I never got any praise. He never said well done to me. Occasionally I felt I was doing quite well and I was still getting criticised. But in the end I didn’t care, and it probably helped me get a good perspective on things – ‘You’ve won a trophy, it’s history, put it behind you, and now win the next one.’ And that’s actually a positive way for a sportsman to think. So that became my mentality. I was never allowed to think: ‘Yes, I’m British junior champion’, and rest on my laurels. That was knocked out of me at a very young age.
Perhaps he was moulding me into the sportsman he had wanted to be himself. Dad had ambitions to be a professional footballer. I don’t know why he didn’t make it because he was talented. Maybe he didn’t have the mentor that he became for me. Also, because he’d been lazy when he was young, he was determined that I wouldn’t fail for lack of effort. He understood that if I was going to be successful it had to start from a young age.
I was thinking a lot more clinically than some of the adult amateur players I was up against. Most of them were 18 to 20 and had been playing for 10 years down the club, but none of them thought like me. They were often lazy in their mind and approach, and it was obvious they were not going anywhere because their attitude was so wrong. If I’d had that attitude I wouldn’t have made it. I needed to think as I did in order to become a top sportsman.
Mum didn’t play much of a role in my development as a snooker player other than cooking and making sure the house was looked after. She had her own life. By the time Dad was around 30 he didn’t really need to work any more. Amazing – especially since he’s naturally lazy. He told me that he used to be asleep in bed when the wage packets came through the door around 1 a.m., and he said: ‘I used to listen, and if it wasn’t heavy enough when it hit the floor I used to ring them up and go, “Stop nicking so much; the packets are too light.”’ And that was his work. He’d check the takings, tell them they weren’t doing well enough and had to up the takings, but really by 30 he was a man of leisure.
At 14, Dad started me off on my serious running routine. It was a deal – if I took my snooker and my fitness seriously, and learnt how to discipline myself, he said I could leave school at 16. But I had to prove my intent for a couple of years before that.
‘Ronnie, if you want to leave school early you’ve got to do a three-mile run every morning, come back, shower and down the club for 10.30 a.m., back for 5.30 p.m., you have your dinner at 6.30–7 p.m., you’re in bed at 9 p.m.’ I didn’t like the idea of it, but thought, I’ll take it.