Behind the White Ball: My Autobiography

Behind the White Ball starts with an illiterate teenager getting both a street education and an income hustling in a south London snooker hall and ends with an older, a bit wiser, and literate man still making a living from his cue. But in between there is all the mayhem you could ask for; escaping irate locals after taking the money off the customers in a Liverpool snooker hall; fetching up a bit too often for his wife's peace of mind at Ronnie Wood's place--"although when I hang out with The Stones I end up making the tea"--and, bizarrely, attending Chelsea matches with Peter Cook. Whirlwind stuff indeed. --Nick Wroe

White always gave the impression of being a maverick and his very candid and open account of his life does nothing to counteract this. With stories about going AWOL from school, to hustling money on the underground circuit and no-end of shenanigans with friends and other snooker stars - notably Alex Higgins, White has certainly led a full life. And perhaps this is the issue, for I felt that the cheeky Cockney took the partying a step too far.

Some of his recollections are doubtless amusing, but to continually read that he has gone on alcohol-fuelled benders for days and weeks at a time leaving his long-suffering partner home alone with the kids, strikes me as nothing short of irresponsible. A handful of times you could forgive, but this seems to have been a constant theme throughout his life and his selfishness can surely not have benefitted his young kids.

I can confidently still say that I admire him tremendously for his ability on a snooker table, but unfortunately I can not say the same of him as a father or as a person.


Behind the black ball   July 30, 2004
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Behind the White Ball is a great autobiography but it is too short. And that is meant as a compliment. The life story of Jimmy White is so unbelievable that one could easily write a book twice as long as this one. There is not much snooker in it. No endless tales of all the great matches The Whirlwind has played throughout his magnificent carreer. Jimmy has always been a modest lad - and he still is. Even his most memorable moment - the infamous black ball of the 1994 Crucible Finale - is only mentioned in a few lines. And yet that black ball is what Jimmy's life was and is all about. Jimmy will go into snooker history as the best player who has never won the World Title. Maybe he should have changed the title of his biography. Behind the Black ball says it all. This biography is unbelievable, hilarious, funny and in more than one occasion very moving.
It is a must read for every snooker fan with a heart.

Diederik van Vleuten, The Netherlands


Spot on for the White   June 15, 2004
Patrick Duffy
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I sometimes think this book should have been called "The Jimmy & Alex Show". The capers of Jimmy White and Alex Higgins will have you whizzing along at breakneck speed. Thoroughly interesting starting with Jimmy hanging out in the local snooker hall when he should have been in school, breaking his leg and then playing snooker with the walking stick, playing the amateur circuit and finally to his professional status. The stories are legendary (especially where Alex Higgins is involved) and, at times, you wonder is this book a dream with some of the things Jimmy White got up to.

The book is open and doesn't dodge the issues between Jimmy and Maureen. The reader gets to see, albeit through a haze of drink at times, Jimmy's World of snoooker and all the associated characters. Towards the end of the book we get an interesting insight into why Jimmy White is one of the best snooker players never to have won the World Championship.

It is one of those books which is hard to put down as you want to find out what mischief Jimmy White gets into next. The saga where a car load of them try to get through Lucan, Dublin and stopped by a garda is something out of a comedy show, especially when you read the outcome. I think the lack of dates tends to leave you being in one period of his life, then we have another story from another period and we wind up completely somewhere else but, in a way, it keeps it interesting - just like Jimmy White's life.


You'll get drunk just reading it...   November 27, 2003
M. Robins (Exeter, UK)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

For the armchair sporting public, Jimmy White remains an icon of the days when snooker was fun, when players knocked back the vodkas instead of poncy mineral water, and when they hit the front pages as often as the back ones. White contributed (much) more than his fair share of the debauchery and tells us about some of it in this book.

Behind the White Ball mirrors Jimmy’s life in form as well as content. It tells like a good round of stories in the pub. The chapters veer unsteadily from drinking binges in London, the ensuing hangover (in Dublin), taking in Canada, Tasmania, Hong Kong, India and anywhere else where the balls are set up and the bar is open. Jimmy was there, getting up to God knows what. The book has a habit of avoiding dates and times. They don’t matter. Jimmy probably doesn’t remember anyway. Whatever happened was just one more comedy of errors in his life. Who cares what year it was?

He tells his tale exactly as you’d expect, free of both arrogance and false modesty, a thoroughly likeable character whose treatment of his wife is the only black mark. Unlike Alex Higgins and other Professional Lads, he never seems like someone you’d cross the street to avoid. Even when, perhaps inevitably given his lifestyle, Jimmy hits the rocks with personal difficulties and serious illness, everything is told with humour (he’s still Jimmy after all) but a contrasting poignancy as well, particularly when recounting his late brother’s unconventional send-off.

The misses? Well, a blurb on the back regards the book as ‘refreshingly free of snooker’. It’s true that BTWB sensibly avoids the endless rehashing of old matches, Player A won a frame, Player B scored a 75 to draw level etc. But perhaps Jimmy could have reminisced a little more about his great matches. How did he really feel about the missed black in 1994? What did he do afterwards, who did he speak to? We learn very little of the pin-drop moments when the green baize enthralled the nation, and of which he was such a big part. His matches with Higgins, Hendry, and Thorburn. He remarks early on of how enchanting he found the ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ of a snooker hall. Could he not have elaborated as he progressed from dingy clubs to Wembley and the Crucible?

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t thoroughly enjoy BTWB. You can read it in a couple of hours but you’ll come back to it (or certain chapters) far more often. And Jimmy WILL win the world title. Just you wait.