Snooker world champ was hustler who wore pony-tail to dodge knives and bullets
Cliff Thorburn was a real life ‘Fast’ Eddie Felson from movie The Color Of Money and used to travel North America playing people called things like ‘Skinner the Bus Driver’
Cliff Thorburn back in 1986(Image: Getty Images)
Snooker legend Cliff Thorburn was a real life ‘Fast’ Eddie Felson who was threatened with guns and knives as a billiard room hustler.
Before turning pro the 1980 world snooker champion spent 10 years playing for cash in back street clubs across North America – just like Paul Newman’s character in 1961 movie The Hustler and its 1986 sequel The Color Of Money.
Cliff, now 78, said he was living in San Francisco in the late ‘60s when he was taken to play ‘Skinner the Bus Driver’ in nearby Oakland.
Thorburn, who was playing 14 hours a day, started to win before being warned by an onlooker: “No boy’s ever gotten out of this place with Skinner’s money.”
The man then smiled and pulled back his jacket to reveal a gun. Thorburn was still up for clearing them out before his backer told him in no uncertain terms that he had better start losing some frames.
He also once had a knife pulled on him on Vancouver Island after taking some fishermen to the cleaners at the local pool hall.
After bearing another hustler in a marathon match in San Francisco Thorburn said: “I had all of his money – then he goes into his jacket, and he’s got a freaking gun in his hand.
“Now he’s walking towards me. I could feel the blood run…just the strangest feeling. My legs were starting to go. He walks by me. I’m saying to myself, ‘That b*****’s going to shoot me in the back’.
“And then I hear him say to one of his friends, ‘Give me 60 bucks for my gun’.
“He then paid me my 30 dollars. It took six hours to get that last 30 off him. That’s how tough – or stubborn – I was.”
Fellow players ranged from ‘The Whale’, ‘Canadian Dick’ and ‘Fat Bill’ to ‘Philippine Gene’, ‘Hippy Dave’ and ‘The Garbage Collector’.
Thorburn even briefly shaved off his trademark moustache and sported a ponytail in a bid to go unrecognised while hitchhiking.
By his own admission he only arrived in England in 1973 after he ‘ran out of customers’ in America. He said two-time world champ Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins once hurled a snooker ball at him after losing a cash game. On another occasion the Irishman, died in 2010 aged 61, hurled an empty vodka bottle at him over a poker game.
