A SAINT AND A SINNER; HURRICANE DEAD REMEMBERING ALEX.

Byline: VICTORIA McMAHON

"HE was a saint and a sinner," declared Richard Dormer yesterday as he tried to do the impossible and sum up Alex "Hurricane" Higgins.

The award-winning actor and writer should know after becoming good pals with the bad boy of snooker as he played him in the one-man hit show Hurricane based on Higgins' turbulent life.

"But most of the time a saint," smiled the Belfast actor sadly.

His voice wavers from admiration, laughter to cracking with grief, adding: "I've been completely taken aback by how upset and shaken I am over his death.

"I was very fond of him. I knew he wasn't well but I thought he would bounce back - just as Ray Reardon said everyone thought he'd be around forever because he was such a fighter. He was such a force of nature. It's very emotional."

In the play, Richard captured the essence of Higgins in an honest portrayal of his life that even the man himself couldn't I've help but fully endorse.

It was a chance meeting in Dublin with a frail, cancerravaged Higgins that would bond the pair together.

Richard recalled: "I was walking through Dublin's Connolly station and my friend was asking me whether I was writing anything at the moment and I said I was writing about Alex Higgins' life but I needed to get speaking to him first.

"My friend said, 'Well look beside you, there he is'. I guess it was fate. I started chatting to him and there was still that intensity and he was stunning.

"He came down with his solicitor to the Crescent Arts Theatre and he watched 10 minutes of the show. I was lashed in sweat. And he loved what he saw."

Not that Higgins ever told the Belfast actor that to his face.

Instead, the frail snooker legend spoke to journalists about how he loved the hit p r o duction and watching it up to 4o times.

Richard said: "He was a man of few words. But he said after seeing those first 10 minutes, 'You must be very fit son'.

"That was it really. The play gave him a chance to relive the good times - he loved it - and the bad stuff, well it's a life lived. He famously said, when asked about [the bad times], 'Well I don't see anyone doing a story about Steve Davis'."

The play was a celebration of his life, his triumph.

Richard added: "The one thing he changed was on the opening night [in rehearsal]. I was doing a certain move and he came up and said 'I wouldn't do it like that I'd do it like this' and he showed me.

"It was for me and him. He got to relive the glory. He embraced it [the play].

"I'll best remember doing the play in the Crucible, and seeing all these guys - fans of Alex's - workingclass grown men with tattoos, in tears and crying like children. He was their workingclass hero."

Since hearing of Higgins' death Richard has recalled memories of the good times he had with the fallen star.

He said: "I've been thinking about him over the weekend and I think my favourite memory of him is riding through Soho on a rickshaw, with him, singing at the top of our voices Frank Sinatra's New York, New York after the opening night of Hurricane. It had been so well received and he was delighted that people had remembered him and it had brought him back to his heyday.

"I think at that moment that was the happiest we both were about the play."

Hurricane was such a success it attracted the attention of Dangerous Liaisons producer Norma Heyman who wanted to bring the story of Higgins' stormy life to the big screen.

It would have fulfilled Richard's original dream to make a film on Higgins' life.

But it wasn't to be. Showing his "sinner" side, Higgins refused to play ball and the deal never went ahead.

Richard added: "Alex started talking money and thinking the budget was massive.

"He also wanted it made in two months and I told him it didn't work like that, that it would probably take two years. He was very impatient.

"He ended up saying if we weren't making it now no-one was going to make it.

"He did shoot himself in the foot, as I wanted him to have input into it and to be a sounding board. I wanted him to get something out of it.

"He could be his own worst enemy, but he knew that himself."

Out of respect for his old pal the actor and writer wouldn't be drawn on the detail of whether the movie will now go ahead - but he did confirm he has already received phone calls about it.

He went on to remember the last time he saw the sporting icon whose genius and life he so accurately captured, Richard recalled: "I was in a black cab and I saw him walking down Great Victoria Street and I told the cabbie to beep the horn and Alex looked up and waved.

"Then he did this waltz, a little dance, alone in the middle of the street...and I think it was a salute to me, like saying 'I remember you and thanks'.

"It's a nice last image to have of him."

CAPTION(S):

STAR Alex during 1983 match PORTRAYAL Dormer as Higgins THE STARS OF THE SHOW Alex Higgins in 1997 and, inset, Richard Dormer on stage in The Hurricane