Ronnie O’Sullivan has opened up about how large parts of his “dream” snooker career have in fact been an anxiety-riddled “nightmare”.
The star allowed TV cameras to follow him for a year to make documentary Ronnie O’Sullivan: The Edge of Everything, which ends with his record-equalling seventh world title win in 2022. But he fails to fully enjoy even that historic moment, and is heard seconds after victory telling his two kids: “I can’t do this anymore. It kills me.”
Earlier, in his dressing room, while just a few frames from glory, he looks close to breaking down and tells his friend and psychiatrist Steve Peters: “I feel like I’ve got stage fright. It’s horrible. I f****ing hate it. I feel like I want to cry. I feel I don’t want to face it. I am f****ing gone. I am scared.”
Many of Ronnie’s issues stem from his dad, who guided his early career, being jailed for murder in 1992. As he was taken down after sentencing, Ronnie Snr had a message sent to his son: “Just tell my boy to win”.
Ronnie, 47, breaks down recalling the story, saying: “Typical. ‘Just tell my boy to win’. Part of me was thinking ‘f*** you, f*** this, f*** everybody’. The healthiest thing for me was probably to stop playing snooker. But I didn’t, I just felt compelled to stick with it.
“I didn’t want to blame everything on that situation with my dad. But I would rather not have the snooker, just a normal family. Not to have gone through that. Forget the snooker. Just normal.” He adds: “It was a dream, but looking back, it was a nightmare. I wasn’t good at having all this stuff locked inside me.
“People could see I was imploding. If I had let it all out they’d have locked me up. They’d have said he’s a danger to himself. Just self-sabotage and hatred towards myself.” Ronnie’s dad gives a rare interview and speaks about being jailed for murdering Bruce Bryan – the driver of Charlie Kray – in a Chelsea nightclub.
He says: “Before this man died and the other man got hurt, that one hit me with a pub ashtray, it broke in half and he tried to put the other half in my face. As I was backing off, the other brother came behind me and sledgehammered me with a full bottle of champagne. And I don’t remember nothing after that. But I know I took that man’s life.
“When they sentenced me, I cried when I got downstairs. Not for myself, but for my family. Going to prison wasn’t good for Ronnie.” In another scene of the Amazon film Ronnie tells his partner, Laila Rouass, he now copes better with the pressures of snooker and has “overcome his demons”.
Actress Laila, 48, seems unsure and says: “It is hard to watch somebody go through that emotionally and that’s when the questions come in. Like, ‘Why does he put himself through it. It is so soul destroying.” Friend and artist Damien Hirst also appears and tells how Ronnie’s mood can change in a flash.
He says: “I once had a time where he called me and said, ‘I’m at the Masters, I’m f***ed. I need to go to the Priory’. I went, ‘Yeah I’ll come and I’ll take you. I went in. He’s in a complete mess. Then we sat down, had a cup of tea. And he said, ‘Do you want a little knockabout on the practice table before we go?’
“We did a little knockabout. And then he went, ‘I might play this afternoon’. He won the f***ing tournament.” Ronnie’s addictions are no more and his dad’s released in 2010 means he can “just play snooker, because I want to play.
He adds: “He has done his time, I have done my time. We’ve done it together.” But his demons sometimes resurface, and he quit the Champion of Champions event on the eve of his first match last week over for and mental health issues.
Ronnie O’Sullivan: The Edge of Everything is in cinemas on Tuesday and on Prime Video from Thursday.