Jimmy White’s six week bender
The final anecdote from our Winter Warmer series comes from the memoirs of hell-raising snooker legend Jimmy White. This story describes a very heavy time in Dublin, when he went for the weekend without any spare clothes, and returned six weeks later.
White‘s promoter booked him into the luxury Gresham Hotel, and arranged for them to send 24 bottles of Dom Perignon champagne to his room every day.
All was going well until infamous boozer Alex “Hurricane” Higgins checked into the same hotel.
“I’ll take my usual suite,” he informed reception.
“Sorry, Mr Higgins, but a Mr White is already booked into that,” he was told.
Higgins wasn’t happy. “That’s no trouble,” he told them. “I’ll just stay in his bathroom.”
He fucking did as well. He constantly wore this white suit — Higgins thought he had to dress at his very best in The Gresham — and he slept in the bath, in this white suit, for three nights until he moved to the floor below.
White and Higgins were joined by “nightclub girls, croupiers, hostesses, UB40” and Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy for the mother of all benders:
The party carried on for 17 days. At one point the promoter’s wife came to tell us he had been carted off to a mental hospital after having a breakdown.
She simply cut our ration to 12 bottles of champagne a day.
In the end all the booze gave me alcohol poisoning and I decided it was time for home.
“I’m off lads, I’ve got to go,” I told some of the stragglers.
I flew to Gatwick and presented myself at our front door, ready to make peace with Maureen.
The second the door opened I knew I was in trouble. It all kicked off and before I knew it, I was out of there again.
“Fuck this”, I thought, and told the cab driver to get me back to Gatwick. Fast forward two hours and I was back at The Gresham.
“Can I check into the Elizabeth Taylor suite?” I said to the girl behind reception.
“You could do,” she replied. “But you never checked out in the first place.”
