A warning call as Hurricane goes gently into that good night

ANOTHER piece of childhood vanished for a lot of people over the weekend with the death of former world snooker champion Alex Higgins.

Even his nickname, Hurricane, evokes a different era – one in which the likes of Kirk Stevens and Bill Werbeniuk bestrode the world like... well, in Werbeniuk’s case, colossus would be apposite.

The golden era of snooker is one of those proverbial times now in the general consciousness, like the Jurassic Era, or the period when Ricky Gervais was funny.