A snooker-loopy legend who had us all dancing to his tune
MR 147 HAD CHARISMA IN BUCKETLOADS AND WAS BIG HIT WITH FANS
BENEATH that crested dome and Max Wall haircut, snooker legend Willie Thorne wore his Groucho Marx moustache like a crown.
Among sporting heroes, from cricketers Graham Gooch and Merv Hughes to Formula One’s Nigel Mansell and Craig Stadler, the former US Masters champion, Thorne’s enviable ‘tash’ was the cat’s whiskers.
Surfing the wave of snooker’s Pot Black era, when no other sport was more galvanised by the advent of colour television, he achieved the contradiction of wearing the crown although he was never the king.
And if his descent into a gambling addiction proved a chronic weakness, public forgiveness was usually available on credit – just as unscrupulous money lenders sustained his habit on the premise that a church debt was the devil’s salary.
Thorne, who was known as Mr 147 and was one of the first players to hit a maximum in professional competition, has died in Spain at the age of 66 after his battle with leukaemia was complicated by respiratory failure.
If the national Under-16 champion 50 years ago never converted his youthful promise into domination of the green baize, his charisma transcended the sport.
When a ballroom plodder with two left feet was required for light entertainment on Saturday evening primetime TV, Thorne was a willing fall-guy on Strictly Come Dancing.
When Cockney geezers Chas and Dave churned out their hit Snooker Loopy with a motley band of backing vocalists from Barry Hearn’s Matchroom stable,Thorne’s cameo line – “Perhaps I ought to chalk it” – raised a laugh. But, sadly, when one of Leicester’s most famous sporting sons, along with his lifelong pal Gary Lineker and Peter Shilton, had his chance to land a major title, he blew it.
Leading Steve Davis 13-8 in the 1985 UK Championship final, he missed a straightforward blue when 59-50 ahead in the 22nd frame as his mind wandered towards the £24,000 winner’s cheque.
It was the turning point of his career. Davis seized his reprieve and roared back to win 16-14, while Thorne would turn flattering to deceive into an art form worthy of the Tate Gallery itself. Years later, he reflected: “Davis was almost impossible to beat and I had outplayed him, absolutely destroyed him, up to that stage.
“It always hurt me that I let that match go because I could have gone on to become a top two or three player in the world.”
If Thorne missed his stop on the path to greatness, his amiable nature always connected with the public. Throughout his career, he used the cue his mother, Nancy, gave him for his 14th birthday – costing precisely £3 two shillings and sixpence – after his schoolboy exploration of the full-size table at Anstey Conservative club in Leicester had revealed a gift for compiling century breaks. Within six months he was the best player at the club – and by 26, he had opened his own snooker hall in the city.
His friendship with Lineker often extended to chauffeuring the former England captain and, during one purple patch in the early 1990s, it even became a superstition. Every time Thorne drove his mate through the gates of White Hart Lane in his Mercedes with the snookercustomised number plate A147 PRO, Lineker would invariably score for
Tottenham. With the effortless charm that captured the heart of beauty queen Jill Saxby, the Miss Great Britain winner who became his wife, Thorne never lost his gift for self-deprecation, saying: “My career started very quickly – and slowed down just as rapidly.”
He was not the first sportsman who fell prey to the demons of addiction, and he will not be the last. But when his gambling habit took root, he threw money around like “confetti” and once blew up to £20,000 on a horse. After his debts spiralled to £1million six years ago, he admitted planning suicide after leaving home with a knife and driving to a hotel, but his wife saved him.
If his sunset in Alicante was bathed in regret, Thorne will be remembered as a sentry for snooker’s place at sport’s top table. He played the game with enduring good humour and later conveyed his enjoyment into our living rooms as a BBC commentator. And one of his last acts was to send Ronnie O’Sullivan a message – “I love you” – from his intensive care bed in hospital after the five-times world champion cultivated his own lockdown moustache as a tribute to his stricken pal. Pot Black? No – we will always wonder what might have happened if Willie Thorne had potted that blue.