Final frame for snooker’s Willie Thorne at just 66
Hospital death of troubled star who became a gambling addict
HE WAS one of sport’s big characters, as popular with his rivals at the snooker table as with his fans.
And yesterday tributes poured in for former champion and BBC commentator Willie Thorne after his death aged 66.
The star died in a Spanish hospital yesterday morning of septic shock following respiratory failure. His later life had been blighted by an addiction to gambling.
His close friend Gary Lineker described him as ‘one of life’s great characters’ but said he had ‘potted his final black much too soon’. Snooker legend Ronnie O’Sullivan said: ‘What a beautiful man, big heart, great company. RIP WT.’
Thorne, instantly recognisable with his bald head and neat moustache, reached two World Championship quarter-finals and won the Mercantile Credit Classic in 1982.
A mainstay at the top of the game during snooker’s boom years of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was also part of the Matchroom Mob that featured in the surprise 1986 chart hit Snooker Loopy with Chas and Dave.
After retiring from the game in 2002, he went on to become a BBC commentator and also appeared on the 2007 series of Strictly Come Dancing.
However, he began gambling heavily and the addiction became worse when his mother Nancy died aged 87 in 2013.
In June the following year he tried to end his life over £1million gambling debts.
Fleeing to a hotel room with a knife, Thorne wrote letters to his family but was saved when his wife, former Miss Great Britain, Jill Saxby, tracked him down.
In 2016 he declared himself bankrupt. He and Ms Saxby separated after 24 years and last year he moved to Spain. At one stage Thorne, who leaves three children and two stepchildren, borrowed more than £1million to feed his gambling.
He once revealed how lenders threatened to chop off his wife’s fingers and take her jewellery. The couple had lived in Broughton Astley, Leicestershire, but the house was repossessed. Thorne told in March how he was suffering from leukaemia. He was first admitted to hospital in Spain on May 2 and had three blood transfusions, treatment for a virus, MRI scans and a check on his heart.
He was then admitted to Torrevieja Hospital on the Costa Blanca with dangerously low blood pressure on Sunday.
After being put in an induced coma, he died shortly before 2am yesterday with members of his family at his bedside.
His friend and carer Julie O’Neill said: ‘He passed away very peacefully and without pain listening to his children saying they love him.’
Snooker star Stephen Hendry said: ‘Very sad news – Willie was one of my favourite people in snooker.’ Former rival and cocommentator Dennis Taylor also paid his respects, saying: ‘Devastating news about Willie Thorne. We laughed our way around the world for 45 years.’
World Snooker chairman Barry Hearn said: ‘He was a larger than life personality and a major part of the rebirth of snooker in the 1980s.’
AFAMOUS missed blue and a long-standing battle with bankruptcy and addiction serve as ill-fitting epitaphs for a snooker player who was a mainstay in the top echelons of the game during its peak in the 1980s.
Willie Thorne, who has died at the age of 66, was immortalised in Chas ‘n’ Dave’s chart hit ‘Snooker Loopy’, lamenting: “Old Willie Thorne, his hair’s all gawn...”
Thorne, whose talent was never in question, failed to win a major trophy and was haunted by his error in the 1985 UK Championship final against Steve Davis, when, leading 13-8 and on the verge of extending his lead to within two of victory, when he missed the simplest of blues. Writing many years later, Thorne admitted: ‘All I could think about was the way I’d failed in big games in the past.’
Thorne, who was born in Leicester on March 4, 1954, only started playing snooker at the age of 14 but within two years had been crowned England’s under16 champion.
Swiftly turning professional, he came to be regarded as one of the sport’s finest break builders and would go on to become only the third player to secure 100 competitive centuries. However, his desire to compile big scores meant ‘Mr Maximum’ lacked the tactical patience that could have yielded greater success.
Thorne reached his first of two World Championship quarter-finals in 1982, where he pushed the eventual champion Alex Higgins, and three years later, just three months before his painful loss to Davis, he won his first and only world ranking title, beating Cliff Thorburn to lift the Mercantile Credit Classic.
But Thorne was already struggling with a gambling addiction, and his run to the UK semi-finals in 1987 — where he was crushed 9-2 by Davis — represented the final major success of a generally unfulfilled playing career.
Thorne, who worked as a BBC commentator for 30 years, later revealed he lost £1million to gambling in his career. He was declared bankrupt in 2016.
He remained a familiar figure within the sport and competed in the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2007. He announced he was beginning treatment for leukaemia in March 2020. He died yesterday morning at the age of 66 having being placed into an induced coma in hospital in Spain.