Ken Doherty hoists the mainsail of memory and puts to sea for a dreamy cruise around an archipelago of his landmark days. The skipper of a life less ordinary, he island hops across the years with a glorious, coltish zest for life few 55-year-olds can summon, the windjammer of his recollections dropping anchor in familiar harbours.
As he travels, the accompanying soundtrack veers across a wide emotional bandwidth. As he recalls days and dreams at his old Crucible stomping ground, notably that tremor-inducing triumph 28-years-ago, it is to the music of the laughter that comes as easily to him as potting a straight black, a sustained, turbo-powered giggle that machine-guns the day with the good humour that is the Dubliner’s familiar calling-card.
On other occasions as he takes a seat to observe the film of his own life, images of the late father and mother, or his 17-year-old son Christian (“we are as thick as thieves, I’m blessed to have him”) develop in the darkroom of his mind and he grows quieter, thoughtful, the love pouring from him like water from a fountainhead.
“My one regret is that my Dad never got to see me play. He died very young, when I was only 13 in 1983.
“He used to let me stay up and watch Pot Black with him on a Thursday night. I was only eight. He was a huge Ray Reardon fan. I was mesmerised by Alex Higgins.
“That year there was a small little snooker table at the end of my bunk bed on Christmas morning. That was the beginning, my father letting me stay up to watch Pot Black.”
Nineteen yeas on, all his doubts melting away under the Sheffield lights, Doherty won the World Championship.
Famously, his mother, Rose, had been too nervous to watch. She cycled to Clarendon Street Church to light a candle for Ken, suffered a puncture on the way home and heard from a passer-by that her son was champion of the world.
“There were hundreds at Dublin Airport when I got back. She was at the front. Just to see her there. Jeez. I handed her the trophy and told her ‘that’s for you Mam, for all you’ve done, for all the sacrifices ...’”
It remains a moment of such gut-bursting power that his voice tails off as he stops to chalk the cue of his composure, the umbilical cord of love again conjoining mother and son.
Riveted by Rory McIlroy’s existential struggle around Amen Corner last Sunday, Doherty found himself involuntarily drifting backward in time to 1997.
Back to an airless Crucible, the threads of his dreams threatening to unravel. Struggling to breathe, his mind playing tricks on him.
As the acid of anxiety scorched McIlroy’s features after he dunked his ball into Rae’s Creek on 13, Doherty could hear again the demons in his own ear as he sought to take down the great Stephen Hendry.
“I’d lived all those moments Rory was going through. I remember I was 15-7 up against Stephen and he came back to 15-12. He was noted for his comebacks. He was going for six titles in a row. I was properly shitting myself.
“I was thinking to myself ‘not me, not now, not in the final, not here. This is my moment.
“Don’t do this to me, because I’ll never get over it.’ And I probably wouldn’t have. If he had have come back and beaten me I probably never would have recovered.
“Like if Rory hadn’t won this time, that green jacket might have been gone forever.”
Having lost two world finals and endured heartbreaking near misses at the Masters and UK Championship, Doherty understood the mental pummelling that missed short putt on the 72nd inflicted on McIlroy.
The helpless sense of being imprisoned in an unmoored elevator as it freefalls down through the floors.
“In a psychological game like golf or snooker — they are very similar — the demons are always lurking, ready to ambush.
“There’s so much time to think, to strategise and that brings extra pressure. The mental strain of that is intense.
“How Rory held himself together in the face of adversity was remarkable. It looked like he was gone several times, but his resilience, his courage and his talent shone through.
“Showing your character is a talent as well. When everybody thinks you’re finished, but you come up with great shots and you succeed. That’s what he did and he did it brilliantly.”
In his latest novel Ghosts of Rome, Joseph O’Connor identifies the solace offered by a favourite piece of music.
“A song is a strong companion when you’re troubled at night. A song will stand at your door and push monsters away. A song will be your lamplighter. And your truth.”
Snooker will always be Doherty’s song. He remains de eply enraptured by the game — “it blessed me, changed my world for the better” — and though he hasn’t qualified for The Crucible since 2011, he will relish his TV role this week.
A sample tray of his favourite stories.
The night/early morning in 1985 when snooker stopped the world. Taylor v Davis at the Crucible. More than 20 million hypnotised by BBC’s enthralling post midnight coverage.
“I was 14, going out with a girl from Donnybrook. I was dropping her home, hoping to get a kiss and a cuddle and hoping that all the family were gone to bed. Because it was 11pm or something like that.
“Of course when we went into the house they were all up, glued to the TV watching the snooker.
“So I knew the kiss and cuddle wasn’t coming, so I said ‘f*** this, I’m running back to Ranelagh to watch the end of the match’. When I got back, my Mam and my brothers were all watching. We were totally engrossed in it.
“That superheated my ambition. If Dennis could topple the great Steve Davis, a player who was almost invincible at that time, then a young lad from Ranelagh could dream.”
Doherty remains the only player in snooker history to have won the Triple Crown of Junior (U-21), Amateur and Professional World Championships. He convulses into laughter as he recalls the first of those victories.
“I didn’t even know it was on. I was 19, I’d only just come over to London from Ireland with 500 quid, my cue and a little bag of clothes.
“A fella from London, Curly Mick, said ‘are you going to Iceland?’ I told him I couldn’t afford it. He asked if he paid for my flight would I go. I said ‘f***ing right I will.’
“Curly Mick — to this day I don’t know his second name, he’d a mop of curly hair, he was a gambler from London who loved the snooker.
“I beat Jason Ferguson in the final. I got 3,000 quid, a perpetual silver cup and a trophy with an Icelandic flag made of volcanic rock. Curly Mick asked to bring that trophy back to his mates in London to take a few pictures.
“I never saw him or the trophy again. Not once to this day ... he disappeared.”
The warm rush from those later spring days in 1997 has lost none of its thermal powers. He glows as he remembers.
“An open top bus through Dublin. Even to this day I can’t believe that happened.
“A Chief Superintendent told me they didn’t have a single phone call reporting a crime to Garda HQ in Harcourt Square for the last three hours of the final.
“A girl on the Garda switchboard rang Telecom Eireann to report a fault with the phones, that nobody was getting through. The person on the other end of the line said ‘there all watching the bleedin’ snooker.’
“The Superintendent said to me ‘Doherty, you should be on television more often, you’d make my life an awful lot easier.’
“The funny thing is after such a wonderful year, going out onto the pitch in Lansdowne Road and Croke Park on Leinster final day with the trophy, being invited to Celtic and Old Trafford, I made the final again in 1998, but got beaten by John Higgins.
“I get back to Dublin Airport and instead of an open top bus I had to queue for a f***in’ taxi home (he’s in hysterics again).”
He’ll take the familiar road to The Crucible today and feel something monumental stir in his heart.
“I’d love to play there one more time. I’d walk into the arena and kiss the ground. The history. Dennis in ’85. Alex in ’82. Thorburn’s 147. You can feel it around you.
“But if it doesn’t happen, that’s okay. What a life it’s been. If I went tomorrow, I’d die a happy man.”
Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts.
