Delboy99
Sire
I managed Jimmy White and Alex Higgins in wild heydays – it was just fun.
Managing two of snooker’s most uncontrollable figures may sound like a serious headache, but Harvey Lisberg says it was just a whole lot of fun.Lisberg worked in management of musicians but branched out into snooker in the early 1980s as the sport approached its boom years.
He took on a young Whirlwind as a client, sprinkling a bit of glitz and glamour on his image as he looked to sell the talented Londoner to the world.
Later came the Hurricane, with Lisberg taking on a mammoth task in trying to keep the legendary Northern Irishman in check.
Fond memories abound for the 84-year-old, though, who has recalled some of the wild tales of working with the pair in his new short book ‘Managing the Bad Boys of Snooker’ which follows ‘I’m Into Something Good’ on his work in music.
‘The reaction to the snooker part of the other book was terrific and I reconnected with Jimmy for the first time in 40 years,’ Lisberg told Metro on his motivation behind the new book. ‘I speak to him now nearly every other day.
‘He told me these stories and the one for me that stood out was about the Kray twins.’
Indeed the tale Lisberg tells of White being bundled into a car and taken to visit Ronnie Kray in prison at the gangster’s instruction is a standout anecdote in the book.
There was also a sense of frustration that the Whirlwind’s distractions off the table were costing him silverware, but Lisberg says that was not the case at all.
‘The ride was like going to the Blackpool Pleasure Beach when you’re eight. It was just fun,’ he said. ‘The whole thing was like pantomime, it wasn’t real!
‘I didn’t feel frustration at all about Jimmy because he was so young I was convinced he was going to win it [the World Championship]. By hook or by crook.
Fond memories abound for the 84-year-old, though, who has recalled some of the wild tales of working with the pair in his new short book ‘Managing the Bad Boys of Snooker’ which follows ‘I’m Into Something Good’ on his work in music.
‘The reaction to the snooker part of the other book was terrific and I reconnected with Jimmy for the first time in 40 years,’ Lisberg told Metro on his motivation behind the new book. ‘I speak to him now nearly every other day.
‘He told me these stories and the one for me that stood out was about the Kray twins.’
Jimmy White became a household name in Britain in the 80s (Picture: Getty Images)
Indeed the tale Lisberg tells of White being bundled into a car and taken to visit Ronnie Kray in prison at the gangster’s instruction is a standout anecdote in the book.
There was also a sense of frustration that the Whirlwind’s distractions off the table were costing him silverware, but Lisberg says that was not the case at all.
‘The ride was like going to the Blackpool Pleasure Beach when you’re eight. It was just fun,’ he said. ‘The whole thing was like pantomime, it wasn’t real!
‘I didn’t feel frustration at all about Jimmy because he was so young I was convinced he was going to win it [the World Championship]. By hook or by crook.
‘Higgins won it first time and he was probably even more wild! He was a total loose cannon.’
Having worked with rock stars before his move into snooker, Lisberg had a high bar for chaos, but Higgins cleared it.
‘Other than Keith Moon I think he was probably the wildest person that I’ve known, even in the rock field,’ he said.
‘He was a total hustler. A mad gambler. He’d put £2,000 on each race and that was a lot of money back then.
‘Jimmy White wasn’t averse to it either. I remember him going to Saudi Arabia with Tony Meo and they got £25,000 for a two-day performance. Meo had the money but half an hour before they go off Jimmy asked for it to go down to the track and did the lot in!’
The stardom of snooker’s finest surprised Lisberg in the 80s, saying their pull with the press blew most of his musical acts out of the water.
‘I’d managed rock stars and we’d give our right hand to get two lines in the Manchester Evening News,’ he remembered. ‘That would have been nice!
‘I said to Higgins once that I’d got this nice interview for him. He said: “It’ll be £600! It’ll be £600 or I’m not doing it!” I thought, what do you mean £600? But they bloody paid him in cash! I couldn’t believe it.
‘All that time I’d do anything to get a piece in the newspaper and Alex Higgins is charging them for it!
Lisberg’s involvement in snooker was fleeting but eventful and entertainingly summed up in Managing the Bad Boys of Snooker.
40 years on from then, he sees a very different snooker landscape from a manager’s perspective, with success on the table more important than ever.
On who represents the White and Higgins of today, he said: ‘Ronnie O’Sullivan’s your man.
‘It is very difficult because it’s all down to money and they all want to win. If they want to win they have to be more like [Steve] Davis and that can make them pretty boring really. There are some colourful characters in the game today but it’s nothing like it used to be.’
