09 April 2023 , 13:59
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Snooker legend Jimmy White once went AWOL at a holiday camp while on a three-day bender reminiscent of The Hangover film series.
White was one of the top players in the sport during the 1980s, frequently doing battle with Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins. The duo famously partied hard as well as being at the top of their game, though that frequently got them into trouble.
One such incident saw The Whirlwind's manager Harvey Lisberg tasked with tracking down the snooker ace. White had been reported missing by his now ex-wife Maureen, with Lisberg sent to find him after she phoned his office.
“He disappeared for three days and none of us knew where he had gone. I had his wife, Maureen, phoning the office. ‘Where is he? He’s gone off and I’m stuck here looking after the baby and I’ve got bills to pay. What am I meant to do?’" Lisberg wrote in his new book 'I'm Into Something Good'.
“She was fuming and she had every right to be. I was the one who had to deal with it. I made some phone calls and tracked him down to Pontins, a holiday club in Prestatyn, in north Wales.
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“What I found was like a scene from The Hangover. I opened the door to find bodies on the floor, bodies on the beds, clothes everywhere, empty bottles and cans all over the place. There were at least eight people in there and it was like a pigsty. That was just the first room."
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White was known for his hard-partying lifestyle (Getty Images)
He was close friends with rival Alex Higgins (Trinity Mirror Sports Media)Lisberg admitted that White's behaviour was causing problems with his marriage. He also revealed that the holiday camp bender was far from the such only incident White became embroiled in.
“I couldn’t see Jimmy, so I stumbled over the carnage into the next room, where there were yet more bodies. And there was Jimmy, out cold. He was still in his clothes, so I got hold of him by the collar and pulled him out of bed," he added.
"‘What’s going on?’ he croaked as he came to. ‘You’ve got to phone Maureen,’ I said. ‘Now.’ It was a scenario he was all too familiar with. He and Maureen were constantly at each other’s throats because of his behaviour.
"He was just incorrigible, either out boozing, womanising or gambling. He had a similar attitude to me when it came to money. Jimmy himself had grown up in pubs and seedy establishments.
"He was immersed in the drinking culture, so it was inevitable that he would be a boozer. His life seemed to be one long bender after another. I was forever having to extricate him from various self-inflicted scrapes.”
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