Alex "Hurricane" Higgins, who has died at the age of 61 from throat cancer, was snooker's first television superstar. At the age of 23, he became world champion at his first attempt. But his violent temper, drunkenness, gambling and drug-taking alienated him from some of his fellow professionals and from the game's authorities. The fame and adulation were a far cry from Alexander Gordon Higgins' beginnings in Protestant working-class Belfast where he was born on 18 March 1949. His addiction to snooker began early. By the age of 11 he was hustling at the Jampot, a seedy hall where he developed the speed around the table that earned him his nickname. ALEX HIGGINS: 1949-2010 Born: 18/3/1949 Highest ranking: 2 (1976/77, 1982/3) Career highs: World champion - 1972, 1982 He won the Northern Ireland championship in 1968 as an amateur. He turned professional in 1971 and, within a year, he defeated John Spencer in the World Championship when he became the youngest ever winner. But within weeks he began a 20-year trail of self-destruction, wrecking hotel rooms in Australia and being kicked out of India for drunken behaviour. These violent, drunken outbursts brought him into frequent conflict with snooker's governing body, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA). Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. The WPBSA fined him thousands of pounds throughout his career, usually for abusive language and ungentlemanly conduct. Higgins was an obsessive gambler and was reported to have lost £13,000 on horses in one day. He admitted to smoking marijuana and using cocaine. His wayward behaviour ended his two marriages, but throughout the 1970s and 1980s he was still drawing the crowds and winning tournaments. In 1982, he became world champion again by defeating Ray Reardon in the final. He was UK champion in 1983, and won the Irish Masters in the same year and again in 1989. But by 1990 he was in serious trouble again. After losing in the first round of the World Championships he announced his retirement saying that snooker was the most corrupt game in the world. On the way to making this announcement, he was alleged to have punched the tournament's press officer in the stomach. This incident, and a number of others, including a threat to have the Northern Ireland captain Dennis Taylor shot, brought a one-year playing ban. Higgins pictured in 1999, two years after developing throat cancer His playing career never recovered and Higgins continued to slide down the rankings. His closing years on the pro-circuit were spent competing in interminable qualifying rounds for major tournaments with little success. He developed throat cancer in 1997 but continued to play smaller events in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. But although his enthusiasm for the game remained, his health and financial welfare began to deteriorate rapidly. In 2010, Higgins had been in remission from the cancer for almost a decade, but he had undergone several operations and suffered pneumonia and breathing problems earlier in the year. In May, a charity dinner was held in Manchester in order to raise £20,000 for the snooker legend, who had been living off baby food after losing his teeth as a result of radiotherapy. He attended the event but looked shockingly gaunt. On Saturday 24 July 2010, Higgins was pronounced dead. It was a sad end for a man who was often obnoxious and unruly and whose defeats were, in his view, seldom down to him. Yet, Higgins did as much as anyone to popularise the sport of snooker through his rare talent and undoubted charisma. Steve Davis once lauded Higgins as "the only true genius snooker ever had". Higgins was once asked if he wished things had been different in his life. He replied, "Yes, I could have been a golfer."
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in 2008. 
Snooker player , nicknamed "Hurricane", was found dead in his apartment in Donegall Road, , Northern Ireland on Saturday. He was aged 61 and had been suffering from  since 1997.

Born in Belfast on March 18, 1949, Higgins became the champion of the  at the age of 23 in 1972. He reached the same achievement again in 1982. Higgins' final title victory was in the  in 1989.

During 1986, he received a fine and was banned from five tournaments after headbutting a director of a tournament. He was also banned from playing for one year in 1990 after threatening to have , another snooker player, shot.

Recently, Higgins lost all his teeth as the result of having treatment for his cancer. In May 2010, a charity dinner took place in ,  that raised approximately 20,000 (30,997, 23,859, 34,363, 31,961) so as to allow surgery for new teeth for him to occur. However, Higgins was considered to be too unhealthy to have the surgery in , .

Dennis Taylor, now a snooker commentator at the , stated that "there was just something about the way he played the game — there was a little bit of  in there. I don't think you'll ever see a player in the game of snooker like the great Alex Higgins."

Philip Studd, another commentator of snooker for the BBC, has described the late snooker player as being "snooker's original troubled genius" and that Higgins was "charismatic, flash, fast, unpredictable, combustible — you just couldn't take your eyes off the 'Hurricane'." Studd continued to explain that "while he could never match the consistency of  or , Higgins on his day was the greatest of them all. He touched the heights in 1982 when he won his second world title. He pipped  to the final thanks to a break still widely regarded as the finest ever made. His tears of triumph after beating  — wife and baby in arms — remains one of snooker's most iconic moments. Without Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins snooker would never have become one of the most popular television sports in the 1980s and beyond."