Alex Higgins never lost it. He was by common consent the most dazzling and sometimes the best snooker player ever seen.

But he never learned to play the celebrity game, never managed to ease himself into the glittery company that had spread its arms wide to welcome him that year when he first won the world championship and again even more so 10 years later, in 1982, when, in one of the most thrilling and draining of all sporting occasions ever, he took the trophy again.

They wanted to envelop him then in approval, confirm his elevation to major star status, confer on him the glamour that was now deemed his entitlement.

But he couldn’t make the transition. He’d never left behind the streets he’d grown up in, would always remain the same working class waif, carrying Belfast within him wherever he went.

This, the sheer authenticity of the man, was both his defining glory and, in conventional terms, the cause of his downfall.

It wasn’t that he said No to celebrity, just that he never got it about celebrity.

Some will remember cringing at his appearance with Terry Wogan after his world title triumph over Ray Reardon in 1982.

At the Crucible, cradling the trophy, he had repeatedly, beseechingly, beckoned his wife, Lynn, to come forward, bring down Lauren, their baby, which after a time she did, seemingly a little nervous, and no wonder.

His face crumpled into tears as they cuddled together.

It’s a fair guess there were millions at home, too, in floods of emotion. Wogan had to have them on his programme the next night.

You both seem very happy now, beamed the genial presenter, but you have gone through some rocky times in your marriage recently ... what was that all about, Alex?

“Don’t ask me, ask her”, Alex shot back, nodding towards Lynn. “It was her that flew the coop.”

‘Crass’ doesn’t cover it. But mainly because of it being said on television, on prime-time Terry Wogan. One commentator likened it to something you’d hear in a backstreet argy-bargy, which was spot on.

Alex didn’t talk the way people are supposed to talk who have made it in sport or popular culture and have begun to develop notions of being a role model.

He talked like he’d never left Sandy Row or stopped hanging out in the Jampot trying to make a rise for a few pints.

His most outrageous outburst was to come in 1990 as his game disintegrated, when he delivered what seemed a sectarian murder threat to Dennis Taylor. Along the lines of “I’m a Prod you’re a Taig, I’ll have you shot”.

Like something you’d hear, and which, depending on circumstances, might not cause any great commotion, in a backstreet argy-bargy after a feed of drink. Hardly out of character with working class life in the North. But in the world of celebrity?

The fact that he’d never managed or sought to slough off his background endeared Alex to millions who might fervently have disapproved of much of his behaviour.

It’s doubtful whether there’s ever been a sportsman or woman with whom so many have felt so deeply involved.

There was a desperation about the communal desire for him to win. We celebrated his victories with an irrational sense of personal achievement, as if we were invested in the outcome ourselves. Which we were in a way. Some of us spent years watching Higgins’ matches from behind sofas through our fingers.

When we think of athletics, we have recall of this or that moment of transcendent achievement or heart-wrenching disappointment, Carl Lewis at Seoul, Sonia O’Sullivan at Atlanta.

In football, we remember Beckham’s goal for United from inside his own half or Maradona’s second against England. Boxing has fixed in our minds Ali versus Frazier or Spider Kelly and Ray Famechon. Arkle and Mill House.

But who can remember over the years a snooker shot by anyone other than Alex Higgins?

The blue to the green pocket in the course of his 59 when he was one down with two to go in the semi-final against Jimmy White in 1982.

A long red to the top right in the same match which had to stop dead, inch-perfect for the black, else disaster was certain.

Shots of unimaginable daring, clearances of imperious grace.

The speed of his play when form was flowing was poetry in motion, the slow tension of his safety battles too tight for any but the tough-hearted. There’s a moment during the 59 break when he’s walking round the table with only the colours left and he suddenly realises he actually has this frame won. He looks up and smiles, all the tension away from his face, and you are reminded that, on top of it all, before bewilderment and loneliness ravaged his spirit, Alex was beautiful.

He didn’t have to do much in those days to be the cynosure of all eyes. There are vivid images in the mind’s eye of him doing nothing very much.

Crouched down over the next red and twitching for action before the ref had replaced the last colour. Sitting in his chair, arms folded across his cue held like a warrior holds a spear or a frontiersman a long-barrelled flintlock. Or just sitting there twitching.

I saw him in a late-night shop on Great Victoria Street about a year ago, in a queue to buy cigarettes or pay for a loaf or whatever, pasty-faced, scruffy, shambling, nobody taking him on.

He did have his rakish little hat on, but that was all from his period of romance.

I watched him lean forward across the counter, holding out his palm with the coins for the fellow serving him to count out the price of whatever he'd bought.

Then he turned and walked past me to the door. There was sadness etched into a face composed into a semblance of stoicism, or so it seemed to me at the time.

Not knowing what to say — I’d never met him — I called after him: “Good on you, Alex.”

He turned and smiled like sunshine had just been splashed on his face. I walked on air all the way up to Shaftesbury Square.