Characters. There aren’t enough of them any more apparently. Snooker “needs more” according to some. People still haven’t got over Alex Higgins, Jimmy White and Kirk Stevens tearing it up on cocaine fuelled benders, or Big Bill Werbenuik drinking a million pints during matches, apparently nowadays it’s far too boring. Nobody even drinks or smokes at the table, the scum!

What is a character? There’s a fine line between being a character and being a knobhead. The width of that line is based purely on how ‘likeable’ you are. But nobody can determine this in advance. Some people will think someone’s ace, others will think they’re a twat. That’s the nature of the beast. For many years snooker had Alex Higgins, he was ‘a character’. Other hobbies included threatening to have people shot and assaulting people. He was also very good at snooker, but to be honest I’m struggling to get over some bits of the previous sentence. Was he a character? Yes. A loveable one? Not for me. Do we want more of them nowadays? I think I’ll pass, thanks, one Alex Higgins was enough.

I think we can agree that snooker is a bloody hard game. To get anywhere remotely decent at it requires long hours of solitary practice in dimly lit rooms. These tend not be hunting grounds for swashbuckling raconteurs. To become a pro these days you probably had to start playing at or around pre-teen age, so that removes the chance of the ‘functioning alcoholic genius’ breaking through either. If you get to the age where you might get served at the bar yet are harbouring hopes of turning pro, favour practice over pints anyway. The difference between being a good club player who probably could have gone pro and an actual fully-fledged pro is usually dedication to not getting sidetracked like the rest of us do.

So snooker here is a victim of its own difficulty – all players have to practice so much in their teenage years that its highly unlikely they’ll have developed witty erudite personas. You have to get your head down and get your cue action sorted, mate, work on your patter later. Furthermore, when you are on the television, you can’t actually do much to advertise whatever characteristics you do have because your entire life is walking out, waving at crowd, playing some snooker and then hopefully doing a 90 second winners interview if it goes well. Quite hard to build a public profile that way.

But we’re in the 2025 world of social media, you can appeal to the masses there like never before. Lucky you as you rise through the snooker rankings. Everything is documented and everyone has an opinion, every remark is pored over and potentially shared far and wide. If you do happen to say a lot, you get called a big-headed bastard. So you have to find some strange middle ground between proficiency on the table, likeability off it and be careful never to say or do anything that might affect this image. It’s quite the tightrope.

It’s worth noting that obsession with ‘characters’ seems to be a British thing. Look at tennis. Tim Henman was boring, despite always managing to raise his game in his home tournament of Wimbledon. Andy Murray, far and away the finest tennis player these shores has ever produced, was ridiculed as miserable. Boring sod, going and winning Majors, why doesn’t he crack a smile every now and again. Nobody in America ever gave Pete Sampras stick for having as much personality as a house brick, he was out there winning stuff. I’m not aware of any other nation who judges sporting stars more on what they do off the field/pitch/table than what they achieve on it. Alex Higgins put bums on seats like nobody before him. The nation welcomed Paul Gascoigne into its bosom. We seem to prefer a flawed genius – preferably an alcoholic one – over a functionally brilliant individual, it’s in the national psyche.

Having said that, I am British and so I demand the right to go through snooker’s elite players, let’s see if we can find some ‘characters’. For the purposes of this, I’m choosing the current World Number one (Trump), the last 3 tournament winners (Wilson, Murphy, Allen) and I picked Mark Selby out of a hat. The plan being to add to it as the season goes (Please note I won’t be covering anyone for whom English is not their native tongue, as I think it’s hard enough to cultivate a public persona as it is, I can’t imagine what its like trying to do so in a different language)

Judd Trump

Obviously the most flamboyant player nowadays, plays shots that look amazing on highlights reels. So that’s good. Also wins loads of trophies. My word we have a cast iron “Character” on our hands… or do we? I should probably add that I genuinely believe Judd will be the standard bearer for snooker for the next 10-15 years, and will overtake the ranking event wins/centuries records in that time. His name is memorable, he does mad shit on the table, and he wins a lot.

Unfortunately, Judd also suffers from a bit of “whinge-itis”. Whenever he loses, it seems to be something else’s fault, usually table conditions. He gets around this now by simply not losing very often so he doesn’t have to give such interviews. Judd also has a nasty habit of, according to some, not winning “the big trophies”, despite the fact he’s won a World Title, 2 Masters and 2 UK’s, appeared in 4 more finals across those events plus took the first £500k Saudi one in nerveless fashion last summer with one of the all time great clearances. I don’t think his bottle is up for question, he’s been there done that. Yes he probably needs a few more World titles to shut any doubters up but I reckon he’ll get them soon enough.

For many years I reckon people just didn’t like Judd because he was (and probably still is) a bit flash. He made tonnes of cash young and he liked to spend it. For a long time he had a wacky haircut and sparkly shoes. I bet his watches cost more than my car. His Instagram feed showed him partying in Las Vegas and Dubai. He liked the latter so much he’s moved there – which in itself is a move treated with outright suspicion. Surely as a multimillionaire, a true character should be condemned to live in the cold and wet UK all his life, but if he should he wish to move abroad then of course it must be to a pre-approved list of classy destinations, not the gaudy nouveau-riche supercars-and-questionable-income playground of Dubai. Tut tut lad. He goes to the gym too?! No, disgraceful stuff…. get this man 8 pints of Carling in a Flat Roofed Pub.  

Due to probably being a bit world-weary of sharing too much in the past, Judd just keeps himself to himself, he’s got his trusted circle and largely keeps out of the limelight. He’s not bothered about being a character, he just wants to win trophies. I fail to get overly irritated about this approach, good luck to him. Steve Davis was considered boring… compare and contrast his post-playing career with Alex Higgins and we can see who perhaps made the best long term decisions there.

Mark Selby

Here’s my take: Mark Selby has become much more likeable in recent years for two reasons… one, being honest about his mental health, which takes immense bravery. And two, for ditching that fucking awful grey suit. For years he was strolling around the table at pedestrian pace, sucking his teeth, getting the white cleaned, tying the black up and he did it all whilst looking like a third-rate IFA trying to get me to invest in a crap pension scheme.

Then he started wearing a black suit and suddenly seemed more affable. The more you learn about him, you can’t help but warm to Mark Selby really. He’s had it super tough off the table, he makes it super tough for opponents on it, he’s gone toe to toe with everyone and there’s not a single player on this Earth who can’t learn something from how he plays the game. His character is coming through much more now, gone is the gaunt vampire look and now we have laughing and joking, 147’s in Crucible finals complete with leading Mexican waves, he even did the old ‘nerner-ne-nerner’ trick on Ronnie like people do to 4 year olds. All great banter, more please.

Kyren Wilson

So the whole reason I’m writing this is because Snooker Twitter has had Kyren Wilson in the crosshairs for a while, he then did a losing speech which even Shaun Murphy said was a bit strange, and then he did his walk-on at the German Masters treating it like a boxers ring walk – THE SHAME! He then went and won it in a decider, mind you…

I was there when Kyren Wilson lost his Masters final to Mark Allen. I was there when he got absolutely annihilated by an unplayable Ronnie O’Sullivan in the English Open final. His losers speeches were largely unremarkable, quite self-effacing while pouring congratulations on his opponent, your standard stuff. However his losers speech to Murphy for the Masters was like something off Alan Partridge, a peculiar mix of talking about how much he was going to have to drink and a misguided gag about Murphy being a few years older. Worth noting part of said speech was “I’m going to smash it in Germany next week”… although the terminology made it sound like a coked up recruitment consultant discussing a stag do, he did actually follow through on his words by winning the event. It’s just that, as has been pointed out, he got the final without playing anyone in the top 16 on his way there.

The difference between the speeches I personally witnessed and his one at Ally Pally is that Kyren Wilson is now the World Champion. Before May he was always a “solid player” with a few tournament wins here and there, since May he’s turned into “serial winner”.  This is obviously great for Kyren, and given what he’s been through with his child, I wish him all the best. But there’s no denying it all seems to have gone to his head.

Where he was previously quite a shy presence, now he’s doing “no-look” blacks, ranting about chalk, telling everyone he should be given the TV table, I’ll be the one to break the Crucible curse and of course that walk on from the German Masters. It’s all adding up to going beyond a bit of swagger and into plain arrogance, and the public don’t tend to like arrogance unless there’s something amazing to back it up. Ronnie calling a 147 after the first red, then going on to do it? We love that. Kyren prancing about because he’s World Champion? Only a matter of time before someone points out he had a kind draw, only had to beat Jak Jones in the final and even then nearly blew it from 7-0 up.

What is more peculiar about Kyren is that I reckon he is actually quite funny and likes a laugh. He turned up with an oven glove at the Shootout in response to something the crowd said, he makes little asides in the arena, he isn’t a bad lad. Is trying to pump up the crowd at the German Masters really crime of the century? (But would he have done it if Mark Selby or Ronnie O’Sullivan was the opponent rather than Barry Hawkins?) People say we need more characters, someone tries to be a character, and people say “oh no, not like that”. It’s like he can’t win. Kyren just seems to be for whatever reason on the wrong end of the likeability scale at the moment, but I’ll cut him some slack because if I had won the World Title, I’d be a bit of a big-head too. It’s what he’s like after he gets deposed (or defends it) that will define him.

Shaun Murphy

Right, here we go. Shaun Murphy is a fabulous player but is still trying to find his feet off the table. Perhaps he’s trying too hard? He’s tried being devoutly religious, he’s tried doing a bit of banter with the Paddypower lads, he continues to try commentary – my thoughts on which are elsewhere on this site. He used to wear fucking spats. Three-ish years ago he started to fist pump a lot around the table. And I mean a lot. Again it’s one of those tiny things that’s completely normal in literally every other sport but seems to really wind the snooker viewing public up, considered uncouth and ungentlemanly. Personally I’m not bothered, but when Murphy did it I always got the vibe of “someone trying to look cool and just looking like a bit of a spanner”.

Shaun has rightly earned the nickname of the Magician due to his wizardry on the table, but he seemed to have lost his way a bit – I often wondered if he almost too carried away with putting on a good show than he was with winning tournaments, like a wilful pantomime villain, albeit one who just pumps his fist in a very forced way. However, he’s since ditched the fistpump, got Peter Ebdon in, eased up on commentary, kept his head down (literally, on the shot) and hey presto won the Masters.

I’ve said before that I think Shaun Murphy’s biggest problem is overestimating his own popularity with us plebs in the general public. Even in the still photos WST use he looks like he’s trying to be funny and amusing, but he comes across like Colin the Office Wanker from the Fast Show. Doing punditry dressed like a rugby club bore – the pocket square, the brogues – doesn’t do him any favours, although I get the impression he thinks he looks the dog’s fucking bollocks every time he looks in the mirror.

He’s definitely a character, just perhaps not a well-liked one. We all know he dobbed Maguire in for the chalk that time, we saw him get all uppity with Jill Douglas. He’s always towing the WST line because he’s on their board thing, I suspect he’s the sort of person who loves getting on committees and chairing meetings and all that comes with it. You can almost hear him saying “Last person to arrive does minutes though lads, hahahaha, what larks, right first item on the agenda…”

Mark Allen

Perhaps the strangest one to put a label on of the lot here. Mark Allen started out his career as this free scoring, free flowing, heavy break builder who we all thought would surely win a World Title. He won a Masters, thumping an in-form Ronnie on the way, but largely didn’t win perhaps as much as his obvious talent for the game should have done. He was always approachable on Social Media and not afraid to speak his mind. He was A Character.

Then about 2 years ago he lost a bit of weight and with it also lost the ability to peel off quickfire centuries, instead preferring to take the mantle of Mark Selby for “man most likely to have the late night finish”. It has been somewhat effective, he’s won a fair few titles and even went to World Number One, even if it hasn’t perhaps been to everyone’s taste to watch as entertainment, Stephen Hendry being particularly vocal on the matter.

Of all of this list, I suspect the Marks are the ones I’d most like to go for a pint with, and Allen definitely has a personality – he’s just been a lot more guarded about showing it recently. He has had some off table issues around financial and family matters, maybe he’s just decided to get his head down and win lots of cash and trophies. Allen also has a habit of moaning about conditions, but at least he doesn’t hold back in his views – and weirdly made a 147 on a table the day after complaining about it, so it comes across slightly more constructive than “I lost and it’s the top cushion’s fault”. When Ronnie retires, will he be a well-known name outside of the snooker fraternity? I don’t think so, but again I don’t think he’ll care.

More to come on more players later in the season…

© Long Form Snooker 2025