Richard Dormer was able to call on childhood memories when he decided to write and stage a play about rebellious snooker star Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins. He spoke to JENNY SCOTT. . .

AS a child of 10 Richard Dormer watched his parents weep with emotion when Alex "Hurricane" Higgins clinched the 1982 world snooker championship.

"My mum and dad were huge snooker fans," recalled Richard, "and their reactions were imprinted on my mind."

Nearly 20 years later, Richard was crossing a station platform in Dublin when he noticed Hurricane behind him, ordering a pint.

Richard, an actor, had long toyed with the idea of writing a screenplay about the mercurial snooker legend whose talent for the game was equalled only by his capacity for self-destruction.

Seeing the man in real life seemed to crystallise this ambition.

"I didn't really mention to him that I wanted to write about him," said Richard.

"And he was more interested in trying to swap the jacket he was wearing for the one I had on!

"He was quite ill at the time.

"It was just after his operation for throat cancer.

"I just saw flashes of him from what I remembered in his glory days.

"But he was still so charismatic.

"Meeting him just inspired me."

Instead of the film script Richard had originally intended, he and his wife Rachel O'Riordan, a choreographer who trained at the Royal Ballet School, decided the theatre was the means by which they could best express Alex's mesmerising mood swings and edgy unpredictability.

"Alex is a very physical character," said Richard.

"The way he works -- his machismo, his swagger.

"He was like the Mick Jagger of the sports world.

"He played for the people and stuck two fingers up at authority.

"It was Rachel's idea to present the story -- Hurricane -- as a one-man show.

"I had been thinking of writing it as a film, but Rachel said, 'Why don't we do it as a piece of theatre and we can get it finished in months, rather than years?'"

Once Richard had decided on this course, he set to work.

He had never written a play before and although his acting experience, on stage and screen, is fairly extensive, he'd never starred in a one-man show.

"Putting on this play was a huge gamble," he said.

"Rachel and I risked an awful lot on this, so it had to be good. We just threw everything we had into it."

With Rachel working as director, the play slowly started to come to life.

"I watched all the archive stuff I could get my hands on," said Richard. "I was trying to pick up the whole Alex thing -- the twitchiness, the intensity. It was a strenuous experience for Rachel and me, because it was so raw and emotional, but we had a good working relationship. There were no arguments!"

That's not to say the opening of the play, in Richard's home-town Belfast, ran as smoothly as he had hoped. For the subject matter of the piece did not like the idea of his life being put on stage one little bit.

"Alex found out what we were doing in the last week of rehearsals," said Richard. "The papers were full of talk about how he was going to sue us because he thought the play might be a character assassination. But then we invited him to come and see it and he loved it."

The play has since become a resounding success with acclaimed runs in Edinburgh and on London's West End and awards pouring in for Richard's writing and acting.

But, like the life of its protagonist, the show continues to hit the headlines.

Recently Richard himself made the news when he frogmarched a rowdy audience member out of the show.

"We had a heckler and I told him to shut up and he wouldn't," he explained.

"So I jumped off stage and grabbed him by the seat of his pants and threw him out. There were a lot of people there and he was ruining the show. I decided I had to save the last 25 minutes. The audience were up on their feet cheering when I did it!"

The popularity of Hurricane has spread to the Continent with productions planned for later this year but, apart from a stint in New York, Richard won't be travelling with it.

"I don't want to be typecast," he said. "I'm going to try my hand at writing again. I've got a few ideas for projects at the moment."

Catch Hurricane with Richard Dormer at The Lowry, Salford Quays, tonight and tomorrow. For tickets, call (0870) 1112000.