Obituary: Willie Thorne, snooker player

A famous missed blue and a long-standing battle with bankruptcy serve as ill-fitting epitaphs for a snooker player who was a mainstay in the top echelons of the game during its unprecedented peak.

Willie Thorne, who has died at 66, had been among the stars of the game accompanying Chas and Dave on the song Snooker Loopy, lamenting: “Old Willie Thorne, his hair’s all gone...”

Yet alongside Tony Meo, Thorne was one of only two members of the group who had failed to clinch one of his sport’s major titles.

He was haunted by his error in the 1985 UK Championship final against Steve Davis, when, leading 13-8 and on the verge of extending his lead to within two of victory, he missed the simplest of blues off its spot.

Writing many years later, Thorne admitted: “I went back to my seat and the doubts kicked in straight away. I was still 13-9 in front, but all I could think about was the way I’d failed in big games in the past.”

Born in Leicester in March 1954, Thorne began playing snooker at 14 and within two years had been crowned national under-16 champion.

Swiftly turning professional, he came to be regarded as one of the sport’s finest break builders, and would go on to become only the third player to secure 100 competitive centuries.

He reached his first of two World Championship quarter-finals at Sheffield in 1982, where he pushed the eventual champion, Alex Higgins, and three years later, just before his painful loss to Davis, he won his first and only world ranking title, beating Cliff Thorburn to lift the Mercantile Credit Classic.

But Thorne was already struggling with a gambling addiction, and his run to the UK semi-finals in 1987, where he was crushed 9-2 by Davis, represented the final major success of a generally unfulfilled playing career.

He revealed the extent of his gambling issues in 2004, recalling an incident in which he placed a bet of £38,000 on John Parrott losing a game, because he had lost his cue.

Thorne, who worked as a BBC commentator for 30 years, later revealed he lost £1m to gambling in his career. He was declared bankrupt in 2016.

He remained a familiar figure within the sport and competed in the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2007 with partner Erin Boag, being voted out in 12th place.

A keen Leicester City fan and long-time close friend of Gary Lineker, Thorne announced he was beginning treatment for leukaemia in March this year. Lineker was one of the first to pay tribute, describing him as “one of life’s great characters” who had “potted his final black much too soon.”

He is survived by his twin sons and a daughter from his first marriage, to Fiona. He had recently separated from his second wife, Jill Saxby, a former Miss Great Britain.