Will the Blogger

In the sport’s heyday, two snookering archetypes seemed to be at war, and television dramatized the duality. There were the champions, clean-cut automatons who ruled the game for years at a time before abruptly burning out: Ray Reardon, a former policeman, in the nineteen-seventies; Davis, in the nineteen-eighties; Stephen Hendry, a baby-faced Scot who won a record seven world titles, in the nineteen-nineties. And there were the broken and the beautiful, who produced exquisite passages of play but couldn’t keep their heads together: Kirk Stevens, a Canadian cocaine addict who played in a white suit; Alex (the Hurricane) Higgins, who died, furious and alcoholic, of throat cancer, in 2010; and Jimmy (the Whirlwind) White, who reached six world finals and lost them all.

All sorts of lurid scenarios would flash into his mind like tableaux vivants: Mrs Fox's skirts catching on the branches of a tree, and being torn right off; Mrs Fox being attacked by a degenerate ruffian, who might succeed in baring her bosom before Henry Smote him down; Mrs Fox's clothing catching fire, necessitating his prompt action; Mrs Fox sleepwalking to his house, in the night, for him to restore to dignity with his own dressing-gown.

The perfect customer is dissatisfied but hopeful, uninterested in serious personal development, highly habituated to the television, working full-time, earning a fair amount, indulging during their free time, and somehow just getting by.