Of course, he lost sometimes. He entered a Prestatyn Pontins under-16s tournament when he was only 10 and was devastated to lose in the second round. He rushed back to the chalet he’d been sharing with his dad, absolutely heartbroken. In later years, fellow players and fans would all say that you could never tell if Paul had won or lost a game because he always had the same happy demeanour. This certainly wasn’t the case when he was 10. He sobbed his heart out and said to Alan over and over again, ‘You said I had a chance! You said I had a chance!’ It was the last time he ever got really emotionally upset about losing; he was never up or down from that point on. Snooker was massively important to him but there was a dividing line, and that first clear loss was the turning point. He learned. He learned that you couldn’t always trust your talent – luck was involved. He learned that you don’t make yourself feel any better by getting upset. He learned that there’s always another game just around the corner. As Paul matured he was gracious in success and defeat, and he never had a bad word to say about anybody.
He was never sulky about the game but he was extremely competitive. Snooker was more than a hobby for Paul – it was a calling. Just before his 12th birthday, he moved from Snooker 2000. He was asked to bring his talent and potential elsewhere – he was poached, really – by the management at The Manor, a health and leisure centre that also had a snooker club. That was where the 1986 World Champion Joe Johnson practised. Joe was never Paul’s coach but he did take him under his wing to an extent and gave him advice on shot selection, as well as no doubt telling him plenty of stories about life in the snooker world.
Paul beat Joe for the first time when he was 13 years old, and that year he also won his first prize money at a Willie Thorne under-16s competition in Leicester. The prize was £100 and he got an extra £25 for the highest break as well. From this age on he was pretty much self-financing.
Kristina was more sceptical about the whole business than Alan. His dad went with Paul to the club and games, so he knew what was going on and how good Paul was. However, Kris tended not to be there, so she only heard about it all second hand. Maybe you wouldn’t really appreciate how good your kid was at something like that at such a young age unless you were seeing the proof for yourself. Kris tried hard to get him to go to school and do his homework but Paul couldn’t have been less interested. Many mornings he’d get dropped off at school, only to nip off to his grandparents, Babcia and Dziadek, for the day to get spoiled rotten. He’d be treated like royalty before slinking back to school to get picked up again by his unsuspecting mother later in the day. By the time Paul was 14, he was allowed to leave school by the education authorities on one condition – he had to employ a private tutor. From that point on, Paul had nothing to distract him from his beloved game.
Once her son started to earn money, Kristina realized that what Alan was telling her and what she hoped was true wasn’t just parental pride – Paul Hunter really was going to be snooker’s next big thing. All he wanted was to play, all the time, in whatever tournament he could.
He won the Pontins under-16 tournament at the age of 14, which sent out a message to the sport. It was a really prestigious event that had been won by lots of lads who have gone on to become famous names in snooker, such as Stephen Hendry. When Paul won, they all knew that here was someone who would be a danger to them in a few years’ time. He hadn’t had coaching up until that point – Paul always said that while coaching might work for some people, he thought that most problems needed to be dealt with in your own head. It certainly worked for him, but he was very young to be hanging around snooker tournaments and halls all the time.
People have this image of snooker being played in smoky, dingy places, real men’s clubs, with an atmosphere of drinking and being a right lad – and that’s exactly what it was like when Paul was learning his trade. I’ve heard from his friends that there were always girls hanging around. As a result, he definitely grew up quickly – perhaps too quickly. He lost his virginity at a very young age – well before it was legal. He definitely had an eye for the ladies, although I don’t like to dwell on it now.
The first time Alan took her boy away for a week, Kristina felt as if her heart had broken. He turned pro and went to the Norbreck Castle in Blackpool, to what is known as ‘qualifying school’. There, between three and four hundred budding players were competing for the glory of reaching the televised stages of tournaments. Paul’s talent shone through and he won all of his first 36 matches as a professional. Then when he was 16, they went away to a tournament for a whole month. It was a great adventure for Paul, of course, but Kris was very aware that she was losing her smiling little mummy’s boy. Eventually, she says, she got used to him being gone for periods of time.
Of course, she never dreamed for a moment how soon he would be gone from her life forever.
When Paul and I started seeing each other at Nicky’s house, I didn’t think of him as drop-dead gorgeous – I liked him purely based on how cheeky and funny he was. He was tall and wore his blond hair in what I called ‘curtains’ – short at the back and floppy over each side of his forehead. It was very much a young boy’s style – a bit of a state really. He wasn’t bothered about clothes or fashion, and usually just wore a jumper and jeans.
The other part of his life took place in snooker halls and exhibition centres up and down the country, and often abroad. Most snooker players take a long break during the summer, but they often do exhibition matches or corporate events to boost their income even when there aren’t any actual tournaments going on. Nicky showed me lots of photographs of Paul in his snooker gear, standing beside tables, or shaking hands with dignitaries presenting prizes, and I found it hard to reconcile that image with the daft teenager who would push me onto the sofa and tickle me until I cried tears of laughter. Sometimes I would read his name in the sports pages of papers and he seemed like a different person in a different world. He was playing snooker all the time in those early days. As soon as he had turned professional at the age of 16, he had caused a sensation at the UK Championships by beating Alan McManus, the world number six, in the first round by 9–4. That was an amazing achievement and really put Paul on the map. He had followed it up by becoming the youngest player to reach the semi-finals of a ranking event in the 1996 Regal Welsh Open, when he was just 17. In that same year, he also reached the last eight of the UK Championships, where he beat some big names including Willie Thorne; in fact, he played a great game, but lost to Stephen Hendry who eventually won the whole tournament.
It was as if Paul had two lives at the time I met him – the professional international snooker player and the 18-year-old boy. In fact, because he was locked away in the snooker world when he was playing, he was really immature on a lot of levels. When he and Nicky and I mucked about, it allowed him to let off steam and be a kid again. Maybe he needed to do that since his actual childhood had been spent in a man’s world; maybe he wanted to stay a child just a bit longer.
Still, when all was said and done, he was a lad – and lads are only happy tickling girls for so long before they start to think of other things! One night we were at Paul’s mum and dad’s house where he still stayed, and his cousin Anthony had come along as well. I’d been there a couple of times before, as a friend of Nicky’s more than anything, and I’d met Alan and Kris briefly. Paul got us all a drink from the cabinet – he was knocking back a huge amount of vodka as usual – and we settled down to watch a video. It was a boring film, and everyone started to get a bit restless.
Paul suggested, ‘Let’s have a game of truth or dare.’ Well, I wasn’t that naive; in my experience truth or dare was usually an excuse for a good snog. I have to admit that I was hoping we’d get a chance, so I didn’t mind at all. By the time it was my turn, Paul made