If you win I’ll throw acid in your child’s face
SNOOKER legend Stephen Hendry tells today how a stalker threatened to throw acid in the face of his baby.
The star was told the terrifying plot would be carried out if he won the world title.
He opens up about it in his new book Me and The Table, which we are reproducing today.
His ordeal comes amid a rising number of acid attacks in the UK. My wife Mandy opens the morning mail. She is as white as a sheet. “Read this,” she says, holding out a piece of paper. In a scribbled hand the writer sends a warning about the 1997 World Championship. He, or she, claims to know where I live and where Mandy walks with our baby son Blaine in his pram.
If I win the writer promises to throw acid into my child’s face. The final sentence reads: “Black ball, black death.”
Mandy and I stare at each other in horror. ‘They’re trying to wind us up,” I say. “It’s rubbish. Let’s not worry about it.”
But I am worried. I share the news with the police but with little or no evidence to go on they’re unable to arrest anyone.
We don’t publicise it. Even if they don’t intend to carry out their threat, they would no doubt enjoy knowing that their actions have upset me and my family. I do wonder what kind of a mind would threaten an eight-month-old baby over a game of snooker.
I keep wondering what will happen, if anything, if I win the final.
ARRESTED
The thought that if I lose nothing will happen to Blaine or Mandy creeps into my mind. I try to avoid such thoughts because in normal circumstances I would never give myself any excuses. Even a fractured elbow didn’t put me off my game. This, though, has rattled me and I go into the final not with the will to lose, but certainly without the same level of intensity and expectation as usual. Ken Doherty beats me and wins fair and square at 18–12. I’ve had threats before. There was an occasion when s**t was sent through the post but I’ve come to realise that it’s part of being in the public eye. A direct threat to my child, however, is something else. Before this, in 1992, a series of letters, photographs, phone calls and even the text of a play – in which I’m the leading character – arrived at my manager’s office. They were from a woman in Manchester, and her letters became more and more obscene, threatening and weird. In one letter she pointed out that security at snooker tournaments was very lax. Anyone could carry a gun into one of them and shoot a snooker player, she said. The play she sent was called The Death of the Snooker Player. In it I was subjected to all sorts of unspeakable acts, some carried out by other snooker players, culminating in my murder. At this point we’d had enough. The police arrested her. At Stirling Sheriff Court she admitted sending the letters and making obscene calls and was placed on probation with the condition that she sought psychiatric help. She later appeared on a daytime TV show, in a programme about stalking, and said that all she wanted to do was “wish Stephen good luck”. All I can say is that she had an unusual way of doing this. Me and The Table: My Autobiography by Stephen Hendry is out on Thursday in hardback. John Blake Publishing.