Kakistocracy XXXII:Send 'Em To Rwanda.

There is a street in London with a serious crime problem. It's probably the most crime addled street in the whole of the country. It's only a short street, very few houses, and it's an extraordinarily wealthy one. But over eighty criminals who either live on that street, work on that street, or regularly visit it have received fixed penalty notices for committing crimes recently.

Including its two most famous residents. At number ten lives a man called Boris Johnson and at number eleven lives a man called Rishi Sunak. They are and, quite remarkably, continue to be the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the country. Actual convicted criminals now hold the two most important jobs in the country. 

This has never ever happened before. They've not got parking tickets or even speeding tickets. They received their fines for breaking the very lockdown rules they, themselves, set. Which they then lied to parliament and to the country about for months. It seems very unlikely, at least in Johnson's case, that this will be the last conviction and fine he recieves.

Yet Johnson apologists still lurk and, of course, Putin's war in Ukraine has been cited as a reason we can't have a change of PM now. Even though both World Wars, ones British personnel were actually fighting - and dying - in, saw changes at the top. In both cases, general consensus has it, that incompetent leaders were removed to make way for those more capable.

Johnson's incompetence is often overlooked as we focus on his lying, his bullying, and now his criminality. But it should never be forgotten that Johnson is incompetent. He promises the world and he delivers nothing. His wives found out, the country has found it, and, soon enough, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy will find out.

While the likes of Nadine Dorries (continuing to attack Channel 4 while not having the slightest clue about their working model), Jacob Rees-Mogg (who now says all Covid restrictions were "unkind" and "inhumane" - two 'qualities' he's more than qualified to speak about), and Grant Shapps (the uber-loyalists in Johnson's cabinet who know they're screwed if he goes as nobody else would have them) continue to defend him, and his indefensible behaviour, in public some Tories, finally, have had enough.

David Wolfson, Baron Wolfson of Tredegar, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, has had enough. He's resigned. He seems to understand that having the word 'justice' in your job title actually means something. If only more Tories had the decency to follow his example.

Imran Ahmad Khan, the former Tory MP for Wakefield, was expelled from the party for sexually assaulting a fifteen year old boy. Crispin Blunt, the Conservative member for Reigate - and a man who lends himself effortlessly to the world of rhyming slang, defended Khan which was an awkward position to take for a man who was the chair of the LGBTQ+ parliamentary group.

Are these the people you voted for? Can you live with that? Are you happy with it? Johnson thinks you are. That's why he's been joking about 'partygate' and suggesting that the MPs who handed the letters into Graham Brady calling for his resignation, and even more so those that went on to retract those letters, should try living under Putin.

With him in charge, we're moving ever closer to that. While Johnson is a liar, a criminal, and a complete fucking cunt he's not, yet, a mass murderer like Putin. But that doesn't mean he should be allowed to do whatever he likes. You can't justify doing the wrong thing because someone once did something worse. I had a friend once, no longer my friend now, who regularly abused people and started moving into rape threats (that was the line for me, bye bye). He justified it by saying Adolf Hitler had done worse.

It's not that different to Johnson and his cronies suggesting that Putin is the only other option available to us. The other tactic Johnson and his cronies have used, and it's a time honoured one, is to chuck some red meat out to their more vociferously xenophobic supporters by proposing that refugees who arrive in the UK will be sent to Rwanda to undergo some rather sinister sounding 'processing'.

Rwanda has a terrible human rights record (which won't bother the racists) but also this would be such an expensive plan that, according to Labour's Chris Bryant, it would actually be cheaper to put each and every migrant up in the Ritz hotel. That, you'd imagine, would not be something the nastier elements of Johnson's support, the gammon wing, would be so keen on.

They're more lenient on some immigrants. Non-dom types like Sunak's wife, Akshata Murthy, who despite being twice as rich as the Queen hasn't been paying her tax in the UK because she doesn't officially live here. Perhaps it's because Downing Street, where she does actually live, has such a reputation now for crime she's ashamed to admit she lives there.

Even the actual Chancellor himself had a Green Card in case he fancied moving to the US. Maybe he could see what a complete mess him and Johnson are making the country and wanted a 'get out of jail' card on hand should the general public ever rise up and depose them.

Which, sadly, doesn't even remotely look like happening. The British public are beaten down by years and years of Johnson's bullshit. Like abused partners, they think it must somehow be their fault. That they somehow deserve it. But like most abused partners, they will one day wise up and turn on their abusers. Or at least walk out on them.

Let's hope that day comes soon before Johnson can drag the country, and its global reputation, even further into the mire. In the meantime I'm trying to do nice things, things that keep my mind off this shit (until I come to writing these blogs at least). I've seen a couple of brilliant films in The Worst Person in the World (at the Peckhamplex) and Oxide Ghosts:The Brass Eye Tapes (at the Brixton Ritzy) and I've been to several art exhibitions.

A.R. Penck, Bice Lazzari, Kehinde Wiley, Francis Bacon, Whistler, Paulina Olowska, and a brilliant Surrealism Beyond Borders at Tate Modern yesterday. I went for drinks with my friend Jim in Brixton, went to see Fucked Up at the Scala with Colin, attended a Skeptics online talk about socioeconomic inequality and male violence and an actual in the pub Fortean talk by Gary Lachman about the power of dreams as well chatting on the phone to Michelle and both my parents.

Best of all was the second TADS walk of 2022 that took us from Didcot to the Wittenham Clumps and Dorchester and back. That's how I try to solve my life problems (by seeing friends, going for walks, looking at art, and writing this stuff) but Tories don't seem to see problems as things to be solved. Problems are seen as opportunities. Opportunities to obfuscate, opportunities to empower themselves, opportunites to enrich themselves and their 'friends' (for which read business associates), and opportunities to divide us further. Boris Johnson doesn't give a flying fuck if migrants are sent to Rwanda or not. He just wants you to argue about that instead of focusing on his own criminality. We should send that lying fucker to Rwanda. To a Rwandan prison.

 

Did You Spill My Pint?

Did you spill my pint? Are you looking at my bird? Outside - NOW!

If you're of a certain age you'll remember and, most likely have witnessed, phrases like these being used to instigate random violence in public houses and other arenas of social life. No doubt, there is some modern equivalent parlance in use today but, though still a frequent visitor of inns, it's been a long time since I heard the anxiety inducing peal of a closing time bell.

So, I've not been punched in the face in a pub car park for a long time. Which I'm rather pleased about. It's a form of social distancing I'm quite happy for people to continue. But why are some places, some areas, more violent than others? I've been beaten up in Tadley (after the Treacle Fair), in Basingstoke (by a gang of mods from Woking in a car park), a couple of times in London (in pubs), and even in China. After all that research I'm still none the wiser.

Jaye McLaughlin has done a fair bit of research on the subject too - though of a far more academic nature (she earned a PhD at Brunel University for a thesis that examined socioeconomic inequality and violent crime) - and she was at Skeptics in the Pub - Online (on the Thursday before Good Friday) with a talk called Hate thy Neighbour:Economic Inequality, Status, & Violent Crime.

I was looking forward to it. But, unfortunately, McLaughlin, a compelling speaker if one that relied far too much on graphs to illustrate her points, hadn't done quite enough research. I'm not saying she should go out and get kicked in the head after a Country & Western evening in North Hampshire (as I did) or threatened for dressing up as Evel Knievel and Rod Stewart (as me and my friend Rob once were). I'm just saying there's a potentially fascinating talk on this subject but this wasn't it.

It was more a work in progress. I'd love to see McLaughlin come back in a year or two and I'm fully confident she'd have a much better proposition to present to us by then. But that's not the event I'm writing about here and that wasn't the event I attended.

McLaughlin began by pointing out that we'll all be familiar with neighbourhoods that are considered rough and how, in most cases, we'll also associate those neighbourhoods with poverty. But she believes, and many of her studies have backed this up, that's it not just poverty, and deprivation, that lead to violent crime. It's economic inequality and relative deprivation.

Research done in the seventies, in the nineties, and as recently as 2011 show that homicide, the most serious of violent crimes, rates do relate to income equality. McLaughlin studied police reports and ambulance call outs in London and they, too, backed this up. But why is this?

Many of these homicides, the majority of them in fact, arose from trivial altercations (car parking spaces, funny looks, or, yes, spilled pints) and most of the perpetrators were men. Most of the victims were also men. Male on male violence is the most prevalent, by far, form of violence in our society and a lot of it boils down to men fighting over status or reputation or trying not to lose 'face'.

Some evolutionary psychologist believe that because our ancestors competed over both resources and social status we have, us men specifically, inherited this behaviour and the more inequality there is in a region the more intense the competition is between rival males who may be competing for jobs, for money, or for sexual partners.

Females generally prefer higher status males to father their children (I've heard many women say they would never entertain the notion of a long term relationship with a man who is skint, I have never once heard a man say the same thing of a woman) and this has an affect on how lower status men feel about their lives.

This line of thinking, of course, does veer close to suggesting that if women would just put out for these men more often then everything would be better. Which, obviously, is utter bollocks. But in a capitalist money and status driven society we are all judged, not just by potential partners but by almost everyone we encounter, by our standing in society.

Most of my neighbours have double glazing and I don't. I felt seen when one of them made a remark about somebody in the area's windows not being up to scratch. That level of passive-aggressive behaviour can, and does, lead to real aggression in the real world.

Not from me, of course. I just draw my curtains and hide behind them so my neighbours don't look in and judge me. But many men do have an itch to scratch in terms of getting all their anger out and wealthier men can afford to take up extreme sports, or indulge in other pursuits, that do it form.

Less financially endowed males may, in some cases, join a gang or kick someone's head in in a pub car park. Studies have been done into the perception of inequality both regionally and nationally and if this leads to more violence but here, sadly but at least truthfully, McLaughlin confessed that results don't seem to have proved very much.

More work to do! We know that feelings of deprivation lead to impulsivity and aggression and that that increases the likelihood of violent crime but where McLaughlin's talk could have been better would be if she had spoke about some ideas of what can be done about this, if she'd not used quite so many graphs (replication is important in science but repetition dulls speech), and if, ultimately, she had more of an overarching narrative to it all.

She's young, she's pretty much a student (drinking from a jam jar was the telltale sign), and she's still learning the skill of how to deliver talks. Host Kat Ford (of Merseyside Skeptics) was rooting for her and so was I but, sadly, this was not the most gripping, or conclusive, Skeptics talk I've ever attended. Even online.

But I do have faith that Jaye McLaughlin will one day come back with a much better talk on this very subject. She seems to have her heart in the right place and her head screwed on properly. Which is more than you can say than someone who threatens to beat you up because you're dressed as Evel Knievel.

A White To Remember:Whistler's Woman In White.

"White's gonna take control" - White, Birdland.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler's Thames nocturnes are among my favourite works of art in all the world. James Abbott McNeill's Whistler more famous Woman in White is not. But there is one thing that the two of them very much have in common and the clue comes in the title that Whistler gave to the below painting of his lover Joanna Hiffernan.

Symphony in White, No. 1:The White Girl (1861-72)

Symphony in White No. 1! It sounds a bit formal, doesn't it? I'm sure that to be described as a symphony is very romantic but I think Whistler's reason for choosing that name isn't entirely down to his feelings of love for Hifferman. Instead, Whistler is, in his strangely modern way, trying to show that figurative art can also have abstract qualities.

It can be as much about the paint as it is about the sitter. Or, for that matter, river. Hiffernan seemed to understand and appreciate this. She said of the painting:- "some stupid painters don't understand it at all" before adding that "Millais, for instance, thinks it splended, more like Titian and those old swells than anything he has seen".

Jim, as Hiffernan refers to Whistler, was worried that "the old duffers" at The Royal Academy may refuse it altogether and that's exactly what they did. It eventually hung at Salon des Refuses along with other rejected artworks. But now it's back at the RA and it's the central piece of an exhibtion, Whistler's Woman in White, that is entirely dedicated to it.

Purple and Rose:The Large Leizen of the Six Marks (1864)

Or at least purports to be. There a few tenuous links and the odd curveball has been included to flesh the show out but overall the curators have done a good job of showing how a work that perhaps looks unremarkable to our modern eyes was once considered (almost) shocking. It also delves back into Whistler's life, Hifferman's life (though less so - she was, of course, primarily a "muse"), and the general milieu of the time as well as how other artists interacted with, copied, or riffed on Whistler's Woman in White.

I've included names of the artists beneath the images when possible. If there is none, that means it's a Whistler. The exhibition also includes pretty much every known image of Hifferman but either they or, more likely, Wikipedia are wrong about something. The RA say Hifferman died prematurely in 1886 (she'd have been in her early forties) while the free encyclopedia says she lived until 1903. If that's correct she died the same year as Whistler who was nine years her senior.

The exhibition claims she was born in 1839, Wikipedia goes for 1843, but what seems to be certain is that she was born and baptised as a Catholic in Limerick but moved, with her family - at a young age - and along with thousands more poor Irish immigrants, to Victorian London. Whistler was an immigrant too, but a rather different one. 

He'd come, via Paris - where he studied art, from Lowell, Massachusetts. When Hifferman was in her late teens, and Whistler his late twenties, they met on Rathbone Place and she became his friend, his lover, and his confidante. Friends remarked he could not do without her.

Purple and Rose, from 1864, shows Hifferman as both artist and merchant. Though she seems to have been made up to look more Chinese (different times) the painting is intended as much to show off her intelligence and artistic curiosity as it is her beauty. Although, more than anything it is intended to show off Whistler's skill as an artist. Of course it is.

Utagawa Hiroshige - Etchu Province, Toyama, Pontoon (1853)

Utagawa Hiroshige - Suruga Province:Miho Pine Grove (1853)

Unknown - Plate (1662-1722)

There's some lovely Japanese prints, including some from Hiroshige, and Chinese porcelain on loan from the V&A and the Hunterian in Glasgow so we can see the sort of stuff that was inspiring and influencing Whistler and his fellow modernists at the time (the three above items were all, at one point, owned by Whistler) and there's an image Whistler painted of himself in his studio with Hifferman posing, and looking tired, in a white dress.

The figures appear natural, as if unposed, but Whistler could not but help include a little bit of Japonisme in the form of the unnamed woman's fan. It's believed to be inspired by Diego Velazquez, specifically his 1656 painting Las Meninas, which makes for a neat link with Francis Bacon whose Man and Beast exhibition was showing downstairs while I visited the Whistler show.

Whistler - The Artist in His Studio (1865-1895)

 Sea and Rain (1865)

I'd be back to look at the Bacon soon enough. He's another favourite of mine. But, for now, my mind was turned to yet another artist I'm an admirer of. I can't help that thinking man of Whistler's coastal paintings have something of the Turner about them. Like Turner, you can almost feel the refreshing droplets of sea water in the air, the gentle breeze, and the feeling of satisfaction, possibility, and awe you get when you stare out into the endless sea.

It's as if Whistler was the (not so) missing link between Turner and the later Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters. His landscapes don't aim for the dramatic. They are dramatic already so can just be. The music I put on to write this blog is by Debussy and I can recommend it should you be one of the few people who bother to read it.

Low Tide at Trouville (1865)

Calm Sea (1866)

Green and Grey:Channel (The Sea) (1865)

Gustave Courbet - Jo, la belle Irlandaise (1865-66)

The paintings of Trouville in Normandy were created when Whistler and Hifferman were staying with the Realist French painter Gustave Courbet and though Courbet also painted the sea, he seemed even more enamoured with Hifferman whom he called a "superb redhead". In a letter to Whistler, more than a decade later, he wrote:-

"Do you remember Trouville and Jo who played the clown to amuse us? In the evening she sang Irish songs so well because she had the spirit and distinction of art. I remember the hotels by the sea where we took baths in the icy water and the salad bowl of prawns in fresh butter without counting the cutlet at lunch. I still have the portrait of Jo which I will never sell. Everyone admires it".

Steady on, old boy! Though Courbet's painting of Hifferman, in light of his later quote, seems a little lustful, Whistler's feel more loving. More tender. If, because of their technical nature, strangely removed at times. You can even see, as the years go by, that the paintings of her start to feature ever more expensive looking accoutrements in the background. Whistler having moved to Chelsea during this period.

Symphony in White, No.3 (1865-67)

The Royal Academy began to accept his work but it's not sure if they'd come round to his artistic vision of if they'd mistakenly thought there was some link between Whistler's painting and Wilkie Collins's recently published 'sensation' novel The Woman in White.

Whistler was adamant in his denial:- "I had no intention whatsoever of illustrating Mr Wilkie Collins's novel. It so happens, indeed, that I have never read it. My painting simply represents a girl dressed in white standing in front of a white curtain". The publicity did him no harm though. But it's quite different to Frederick Walker's dramatic gouache (below) that was made to advertise a play based on Collins's' book that was shown in London in 1871.

Frederick Walker - The Woman In White (1871)

Weary (1863)

The Boy (Charlie Hanson) (1875-76)

James McNeill Whistler's last will and testament (1866)

As if to thank Hifferman for her role in his success, Whistler (on his mother's advice) amended his will to leave everything to her when he died - and then he shot off to Chile. For some unexplained reason - but one that left her in charge of his affairs while he gallivanted around South America.

Whistler and Hifferman never married so this event does mark a significant commitment on both their parts. There's a small portion of the exhibition given over to paintings that Whistler made of London in the 1860s, particularly around the docks in the East End - where he lived before moving out West, which give you a feel for what Whistler and Hifferman's life in the city was like.

There are sailors in Rotherhithe, pubs, boats, and other assorted characters. Some of them, quite possibly, ne'er do wells. Hifferman's there of course. That's her sat next to the French artist Alphonse Legros on an alehouse balcony in Wapping. They're delightful and evocative images and you can, if you try hard enough, relate them to the slightly more gentrified Wapping, Battersea, and Rotherhithe of our times.

Battersea Reach (1862-63)

Wapping (1860-64)

Rotherhithe (1871)

Ratcliffe Highway (1861)

The Little Rotherhithe (1861)

While, random visit to Chile aside - the story is he intended to fight against Spain in a war for Chile's independence though that is heavily disputed, Whistler remained in London, his paintings of his woman in white started to travel around Europe and North America where they were widely admired. Not least by other artists. Many of whom had a crack at their own take on it.

Some were more successful than others. Albert Herter's Portrait of Bessie could almost be a direct tribute, the hard to pronounce Fernand Khnoff takes a more formal, almost starchy, approach, George Frederic Watts's Lady Dalrymple looks pensive and sad, and Gustav Klimt, of course, adds a bit of sparkle. Though remains relatively restrained by his own standards.

Albert Herter - Portrait of Bessie (Miss Elizabeth Newton) (1892)

Fernand Khnoff - Portrait of Madeleine Mabille (1888)

George Frederic Watts - Lady Dalrymple (1850-51)

Gustav Klimt - Portrait of Hermine Gallia (1904)

Millais, despite comparing Whistler to Titian, goes against Whistler's ethos by implying a narrative in 1871's The Somnambulist (possibly, we're told, inspired by a romantic opera by Vincenzo Bellini), Rossetti went even further by including some slightly muddled moral message along with his interpretation, and Andree Karpeles provides a little bit of titillation for the viewer by allowing a cheeky little boob to pop out of his subject's white dress. In the case of Frederick Sands's Gentle Spring there's no need for that. The dress is completely see through. I've got a feeling he enjoyed painting that one.

John Everett Millais - The Somnambulist (1871)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Ecce Ancilla Domine! (The Annunciation) (1849-50)

Andree Karpeles - Symphone en Blanc (19c)

 

 

Frederick Sandys - Gentle Spring (1865)

 

They're all skilled paintings and some of them are really rather good but they all owe a debt to Whistler himself so I shall end with a couple more of his. Both of Hifferman of course. There she is, with a fan decorated with a Hiroshige design, leaning on a mantelpiece in Chelsea and looking longingly in the mirror and here she is, in the Pyrenees, looking relaxed, abandoned, and at one with the elements - if still a bit sad.

 

Maybe Whistler was taking his time painting her. If that's so, that would be in keeping with the story of Whistler's Woman in White. Something people didn't get first of all but have come to love. I'm at the point of getting it, the significance and importance of the painting in the canon, but, so far, I can't say I love it. I'm commitment-phobic like that. I just like it. A lot.

 

Symphony in White, No.2:The Little White Girl (1864)

 A White Note (1862)

Carjat et Cie - Photograph of James McNeill Whistler (c.1864)

Baize of Glory:Gods of Snooker.

"Snooker loopy nuts are we, me and him and them and me. We'll show you what we can do with a load of balls and a snooker cue. Pot the reds then screw back for the yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, and black. Snooker loopy nuts are we. We're all snooker loopy"- Snooker Loopy, The Matchroom Mob with Chas & Dave, 1986.

It wasn't just Chas & Dave who were snooker loopy back in the eighties. We all were - or at least a huge number of us - and much of that was down to some of the great characters that played the game. Gods of Snooker (BBC2/iPlayer) takes a look at a few of those players and their stories up to and including that decade. Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, Jimmy White, and, most of all, the player most others credit with being the one that popularised the sport - Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins.

Higgins died in 2010 so he wasn't available to be interviewed but the other three were - and they all proved both interesting (yes) and amusing. They're joined by fellow players like Cliff Thorburn, Dennis Taylor, John Virgo, Ray Reardon, Ken Doherty, and Tony 'The Melter' Knowles as well as manager Barry Hearn, commentator Clive Everton, and snooker fans Gary Lineker and Richard Osman.

Plus a few people I'd never heard of. Higgins, along with Margaret Thatcher and David Attenborough, features in archive interview footage. Including the time he drunkenly, live on television, told the snooker authorities "you can shove your snooker up your jacksie. I am not playing no more".

It's one great line from a series of programmes that features plenty of them as well as some occasionally touching footage (for me, Jimmy White and Kirk Stevens playing each other and applauding each other's shots at a Benson & Hedges semi and Higgins, quite randomly, singing "if I knew you were coming I'd have baked a cake on a TV chat show) and a (mostly) great soundtrack.

Music's always important for me with these things and I noted down appearances from Echo & The Bunnymen, The Undertones, Neu!, Dr Feelgood, Kraftwerk, Melle Mel, The Sweet, T.Rex, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Thin Lizzy, Tears For Fears, OMD, Boston, Cream, Bronski Beat, Department S, The Cure, The Human League, The Beat, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, Sade, and Fairground Attraction.

A fitting soundtrack to a show that begins with Alex Higgins beating Ray 'Dracula' Reardon 18-15 in May 1982 to win the World Snooker Championship, a tournament that captivated the nation and raised snooker's profile immeasurably. Reardon was by far the more successful player (as he bitterly mentions - "I won it six times and he (Higgins) won it twice"), but Higgins was the showman, the nation's favourite.

The audience were on his side. But his demons, and the drink, made sure that in the years following that victory he would dissipate the enormous amount of goodwill he'd amassed with a series of transgressions that would cause his life, and his game, to fall apart. Despite that, he is still well remembered, admired, and loved by snooker fans to this day.

The programme takes us back to Higgins' youth in sixties Belfast. Playing against grown men for mone7 in the notorious Jampot and winning the Northern Ireland amateur championship at the age of eighteen. But, at that time, snooker was a very niche sport - and one that was played out over a very long period.

When Higgins won his first world title in 1972 he beat John Spencer 37-32 and the match took six days to complete (that's not even close to the longest, in 1952 Horace Lindrum prevailed over Clark McConachy 94-49). It took place at a British Legion club on the outskirts of Birmingham. The seating was on stacks of beer crates.

Nobody bothered to televise it. The only snooker you'd see on television in those days was on Pot Black. Nobody was going to show a game that lasted six days but a series of one frame matches between the best available snooker players seemed to make sense. Colour television had arrived in the UK in 1967 and Pot Black first aired two years later.

Colour TV was quite important, viewers needed to be able to distinguish the colour of the balls,d but people still watched snooker on black and white tellies though. I remember it well. A bigger problem, potentially, is that the first ever episode went out on the same night as the moon landings.

A fairly decent competitor for the ratings but Pot Black still did very well and stayed on our screens, with its familiar theme - Black and White Rag by Winifred Atwell - until 2007. The likes of Eddie Charlton, John Spencer, and Graham Miles dominated the early years of Pot Black but it was Reardon, the Prince of Darkness, that was winning the world championships.

The years following Higgins' first world title saw Reardon, a former policeman from the Welsh valleys, reel off four champioships in succession. No wonder it rankled that Higgins was still considered the star player. Higgins had moved to Lancashire, gone professional, and acquired the nickname Hurricane. Within a year, he was peacocking around in emerald green suits and had girls hanging off his arms.

He also threw his cue at spectators, had fist fights with opponents, pulled a gun on a couple of female fans in Australia, and stayed up until 7am drinking the night/morning before important games. When, in 1980, he married his second wife, Lynn, and had his first child, Lauren, he tried to change his ways. He didn't succeed.

In 1977, the World Snooker Championship found its permanent, and now spiritual, home at the Sheffield Crucible and, for the first time, began to be broadcast live on television. This caused the tobacco forms to increase their sponsorship, raised the prize money, and started to see a host of characters slowly becoming household names.

Tony Knowles, Terry Griffiths, Kirk Stevens in his white suit, and Cliff 'The Grinder' Thorburn who was seen as the houswife's favourite because he looked a bit like Omar Sharif. But the man who was to outclass them all was Mr Interesting, Romford Slim, the Golden Nugget, the Ginger Magician, the Romford Robot  - Steve Davis. 

Davis won his first world title in 1981 (beating Doug Mountjoy) and went on to add five more during the decade (his last win was in 1989, thrashing John Parrott). At that time, Higgins was playing so badly that he lost to a man who played one handed and, even worse - as would have been the implication during that less enlightened era, to a woman.

He went into some kind of rehab where he continued to drink vodka and tried to get off with the nurses. It was still a healthier lifestyle than the one he'd had before and when he came out he was starting to get his game back. In the 1982 world finals, he beat emerging talent Jimmy White (Higgins was White's idol and soon to become his friend, more of him soon) in the semis and lined up against Ray Reardon in the final.

Higgins won 18-15 and famously cried and cuddled his baby daughter on the stage. But it was never so good for him again. Davis was back the next year (beating Thorburn) and never really went away for the rest of the decade. I saw Davis a few years back at a Teeth Of The Sea gig at the Moth Club in Hackney. He was downing cans of Beavertown Neck Oil, squeezing his younger girlfriend's bum, and, later, while DJing, dancing alone on stage to Atlas by Battles.

He seemed a fun guy and nowhere near as boring as he was once made out to be. He certainly didn't seem like a Tory anymore but video evidence of him joking about the importance of "potting reds" at a Tory party rally shows he once was. In his defence, he now describes the eighties as a Thatcherite decade of 'loadsamoney' that led us to the shit we're in now. Or, referring to that specific incident, "the biggest bollock we ever dropped".

That 'we' is important. Barry Hearn had met Davis at a snooker club in Romford in 1976 and, from that moment on, was nearly as big a part of Davis' success as Davis himself. Or at least it looked that way. Hearn marketed Davis as boring because he was clinical, dedicated, rarely made mistakes, and would never be seen out on the lash, like Higgins, the night before a game.

He clearly saved it up for his later life! Of course, audiences lapped it up. Davis the boring guy, the robot, was sometimes even booed when he played. He didn't like it but it didn't put him off. Before beating Mountjoy to win that first title, he outgrinded The Grinder by beating Thorburn in a fourteen and half hour long semi-final.

While Davis was practicing, practicing, and practicing some more, Higgins and Jimmy White were partying with UB40, Thin Lizzy, and Def Leppard. In the case of Leppard, partying with them must have been infinitely preferable to listening to them. Higgins' marriage was falling apart and, after taking an overdose in Majorca, he spent four days in a mental health facility.

Then, seven days after being released, he beat Davis 16-15, after being 0-7 down, in the B&H Masters. A rare highlight as his career began to fade. Davis had replaced both him and Reardon at the top of the game and Hearn had had an idea that would change the game of snooker, or at least its profile, once more.

He expanded his Matchroom Mob of players to take in several other top players and, like an early version of The Spice Girls - except with snooker cues and penguin outfits, they'd all play up to certain personality traits. Thorburn was, of course, The Grinder. Terry Griffiths came from Wales so he can sing all the time. Willie Thorne, err,  gambled, and Steve Davis was the boring one.

What Tony Meo's singular attraction was is never specified but he's there in nearly every piece of footage of the Matchroom Mob, gurning away like someone who's won a competition to meet famous people.

Hearn was turning snooker into wrestling. No wonder the audience hissed and booed Davis like a pantomime villain. Matchroom Mob merchandise became available, from snooker table duvet covers to aftershave, and the Courage brewery paid a cool £1,000,000 to sponsor Davis.

Hearn had put together a large number of the world's best players but he shied away from Knowles (who'd been involved in a tabloid kiss and tell scandal in which he'd been revealed to wear his girlfriend's knickers - that was actually shocking to people once) and Higgins who had recently thrown a television through a window.

Not a hotel window but a window in his own house. Another played not signed to the Matchroom Mob was Dennis Taylor. The joker in the upside down glasses who, in perhaps snooker's most famous ever moment, beat Steve Davis (on the final black ball in the final set) to win the 1985 world championship final in front of a television audience of over eighteen and a half million.

Not bad for a game that didn't finish until after midnight. A day after the final, Hearn signed Taylor up. Which upset Davis who was still hurting from his defeat. Taylor had joined the stable just in time to record Snooker Loopy with Chas & Dave and his fellow Matchroom Mob members. It went to number six in the UK chart.

A sequel, The Romford Rap, only reached number 91 (even Four Away (Higgins, White, Knowles, and Stevens) reached number 40 with their rival song, a cover of The Wanderer) and saw an end to snooker players bothering Top of the Pops.

While Davis, Taylor, and, somehow, Meo were coasting to mainstream fame, Alex Higgins was further disgracing himself by headbutting a tournament director and getting into a fight with John Spencer! While all this was going on, a new star was appearing on the scene. Stephen Hendry was a young, spotty, mullet sporting, snooker genius from Scotland and he was to dominate the next decade of the sport as surely as Davis had done the eighties.

But Hendry, despite coming across very well (he's enjoyably sweary) in his interview, was not as interesting as Jimmy 'Whirlwind' White so the programme makers told his story instead. Though Higgins had been White's hero, and both shared a passion for the nightlife, White was a more introverted character and he looked uncomfortable in the video to Romford Rap (yep, Hearn signed up White too - he had a certain type of lifestyle to support) and in the clothes his manager, Harvey Lisberg - previously in charge of 10cc, Sad Cafe, and Herman's Hermits, chose for him.

The idea of White sporting a 'punk' haircut was vetoed for fear of upsetting middle England but White's team had him kitted out in some fairly flashy suits. He looked slick, if uncomfortable - and not as slick as his good friend Knowles, but, like Higgins, he didn't always act that well.

He was banned from a Pontin's tournament for drunkenly throwing pint pots in the air, he spent nights down Peter Stringfellow's Hippodrome on the bubbly, he sank a speedboat in Hong Kong, and got into cocaine. Or, as he calls it, "the devil's dandruff". He also lost six world finals (four of them to Hendry).

He started going on three day long cocaine binges and progressed to doing three month long crack sessions (crack, White memorably observes, is "like sucking the devil's dick. It's that evil) which cost him hundreds of thousands of pounds. White had been the young Hendry's hero but if Hendry wanted to win world championships, and he did, he would need to follow the model behaviour of Steve Davis instead.

It was a cruel twist of fate that Hendry should win his first world title, in 1990, by beating White in the final. Hendry went on win again in '92, '93, '94, '95, '96 and, finally, 1999. Seven titles in all. The most of the modern era. The 1990 final had taken place in April of that year and later that summer Italia '90 turned everyone's attention back to football (hooliganism had seen football have a tough eighties) where it has remained ever since.

Snooker has remained popular and still has its characters (most obviously Ronnie O'Sullivan) but it seems unlikely it will have the presence it had in the eighties ever again. For that you can probably thank Jimmy White, Steve Davis, and, most of all, Alex Higgins. The man who once advised his friend White, during a game with Davis, to "shove the fucking cue up the ginger cunt's arse".