Snooker: Ring Me Ronnie or Your Mum Will Give You a Rocket

"Well?" Mum says, apropos of nothing. I love that tone in her voice. It can mean only one thing - Ronnie’s won. The more upbeat the tone, the bigger the victory. The opposite to "well?" is a thoroughly miserable "oh well", followed by "it’s only a game" or "he did well to get this far" or nothing. Nothing is the worst.

Mum and I have an intense relationship with Ronnie O’Sullivan. We take it personally when he loses, we feel let down when he says he’s bored with the game, embarrassed when he wears a white flannel over his head and gives the camera the eyes, worried when he shaves his head lobotomy-style, relieved when he wears an I love snooker logo. It’s exhausting, our thing with Ronnie.

It wasn’t always like this. Actually it was Dad who loved the snooker. He used to sit there for hours on end, watching the balls go down, puffing away at fag after fag, burning hole after hole into the blanket over his knees. As for me, I couldn’t be bothered. It seemed deadly dull - if playing snooker was a sign of a wasted youth, what was watching it?

Then I interviewed Ronnie in 2002 and fell for him - he was honest, depressive, compulsive, naive, vulnerable and had a mouth on him that couldn’t help get him into trouble. A while after that I agreed to ghostwrite a book for him. One hot summer we sat in my garden talking through his life. Every few minutes we’d stop to try to beat our record at kick-ups (200 or so) or eat some more tuna (we were on a health binge), compare notes on serotonin boosts (anti-depressants or running) or watch football. I knew Ronnie had become family when he used to fall asleep in the lounge mid-conversation, snoring and dribbling on the beanbags while my younger daughter painted his face in lipstick.

That was four years ago. I don’t see Ronnie often now. He’s a hopeless friend, really - he only phones if you tell his mum that he’s not been returning calls, then he rings out of the blue at 1am to tell you he’s popping round tomorrow. Sometimes I tell him he’s a tosser and I’m never going to ring him again.

But it’s all talk. Because Mum and I have got it bad. We know that we’ll forgive him pretty much whatever he does. Dad has more or less stopped watching - there’s not much point now his sight’s gone. But these days Mum is there for every shot.

She phones up midweek. "Well?" she says. Ronnie has just beaten Peter Psycho Ebdon. "D’you think Ronnie really had a stomach ache or just kept going to the loo to get his own back on Ebdon." Amazing - she knows so much about the game now. And she worries about Ronnie as if he was one of her own. Sometimes I think Ronnie means more to her than I do. Then I realize her concern for Ronnie is all about her concern for me.

He beats Stephen Lee 6-5 in the semi. "Well?" Mum says on Saturday morning, drained but exhilarated.

"Did you watch it?" I say.

"No, I couldn’t. I thought I’d have a heart attack. I don’t know how you bear it. Still he’s done us proud, hasn’t he?"

Sunday afternoon, I ring her to discuss the final .

"No, I’m not watching. Too stressful."

I tell her that Ronnie has just had amazing breaks of 139 and 138 in successive frames. "I know," she says.
"How come?"

"I keep checking on Teletext. I could do without this, though."

I tell Diane, my lady friend who has issues with sport but a soft spot for Ronnie, about his breaks. She says she’s pleased for him but can’t understand how sticking balls in holes makes for great sport - I look at her as if she’s bonkers. Actually she seems to have defined the essence of most sport.

As it turns out the final between John Higgins and Ronnie shows exactly why it’s great - thrilling safety play and bravura potting, culminating in an astonishing final frame. When Ronnie makes a sublime 60, commentator Clive Everton says it has been the greatest Masters final ever. Ronnie needs just one ball. Which he misses. Higgins had a crucial red. It rolls and rolls and stops just short of the middle pocket. That’s it, says Clive, game over, the fat lady has sung - and then the ball falls in. Higgins clears up miraculously and, at just gone midnight, he punches the air once, twice, three times. He kisses his wife Denise and hugs his dad John Snr. Ronnie looks ashen.

I speak to Mum first thing Monday morning. "Ah well," she says.

Ronnie, if you are reading this give me a bell - or I’ll tell your mum