Hurricane’s wind of revolution

CHANNEL HOPPING: BUNKING-OFF school to play the fool is one way to chalk-up a life of rebellion I suppose . . . more on the return of “Waterloo Road” later.

This was a special tribute to a sporting hero, “Alex Higgins – The People’s Champion”.

BBC2’s enthralling 60-minute documentary told the story of the late Hurricane who blew a wind of revolution through snooker.

From his early days as an absent schoolchild in Belfast’s notorious Jam Pot club with two Mars bars and a glass of Coke for dinner to two world titles and several glasses of something stronger for break time.

Like the raw stand-up comic who learns his trade by slumming it in working men’s clubs before their big break at The Crucible, Alex was the original entertainer.

With magnetic talent and an unpredictable quirkiness bordering on the insane, Higgins was a flawed genius (is there any other kind?) – what George Best was to football.

As another of his countrymen, actor James Nesbitt who narrated this brilliant biog put it, Alex Higgins dragged a sedate, Edwardian parlour game into the modern era.

Exciting, brash, fast – and a continual flea-in-the-ear for authority figures who stood for everything he hated about snooker, fights and drunken outbursts were never far away from Higgins. The danger made him tick.

Even as a washed-up 61-year-old battling cancer, Alex might well have cut a lonely figure on the legends’ tour only a few months ago. Skeletal in appearance and barely able to hold a cue – he was almost like the star attraction in a touring freak show. All he wanted was to entertain . . . he always did.




FIRST day of term back at “Waterloo Road” brought more new faces to the Rochdale madhouse. And this time, the lunatics were running the asylum.
Amanda Burton from “Silent Witness” plays new headmistress Karen Fisher. Haunted by painful memories from her past, Karen’s first day on the job was mostly spent trying to track down truants as her unruly pupils headed for the exit. I know how they must have felt. Sitting through this hour-long dross twice a week is worse than double-history.


Soap roar: Man-about-the-house Ken Barlow’s petty squabbles with Deidre are fast becoming a soap-opera within a soap-opera. The George and Mildred of Manchester.


Soap bore: Die-hard England fan Minty had tickets for the World Cup in the summer. Yet the “EastEnders” mechanic wasn’t the least bit interested in England’s crucial Euro qualifiers this week . . . then again, who was?