Alex Higgins has gone missing. Three months have passed since his last public sighting at the Crucible during the summer - not at the game's most famous venue however, but the snooker club of that name which stands in the shadow of Strangeways prison.

Other sightings have placed him in various pubs on either side of the Irish Sea, hustling pool for a tenner a game, even at times reduced to topping up his glass with leftovers.

Twice under the surgeon's knife for cancers of the palate and throat, he looked very rough indeed, although friends report that he has recently gained weight and moved into a flat in Belfast. He is, they say, "round and about" but at 51 is bereft of the talent, applause, fame - and but for the generosity of others - the money which glued his troubled life together.

John Hennessey's unauthorised biography (Eye Of The Hurricane, Mainstream, stg£15.99), which is published this week, charts his decline simply by assembling accounts of episodes from his turbulent past. This first proper account of Higgins's life is all the more clear-eyed for being written without his co-operation.

We know, for example, that in 1986 he was banned for five events for head-butting a tournament director; we learn only now that he also broke a pint glass and used it to threaten the doctor who was supervising the giving of a urine sample for a drug test.

The late John Pulman, a world champion in the olden days and no mean carouser himself, described him as "Jekyll and Hyde, 90 per cent Hyde". All snooker insiders would concur, arguing only about the percentage.

Even snooker's fledgling Seniors Tour, one event old, is not hastening to offer the Hurricane any paydays.

Snooker players are not a censorious lot but experience has taught them that Higgins, particularly with a drink inside him, spells trouble.

Two years ago, at an Irish Masters champions dinner, he poured a glass of wine into the dress-suit pocket of a sponsor's representative. Later that night, he was decked by the husband of a woman he had insulted in the bar of the tournament hotel.

Even when he won his first world title at 22, it was clear that Higgins was carrying the seeds of self-destruction. After his second, 10 years later, he created one of television's most indelible images as he tearfully beseeched his wife and baby daughter to join him on the stage of the Crucible.

"When he won the world title again he changed, as if to say, `I'm the champion and I can do what I like'," said his former wife, Lynn, who has been tracked down by Hennessey, together with the babe in arms, Lauren, now 18.

Snooker's greatest unorthodox genius came from a Belfast family in which there was never much money to spare. His father, when young, was hit by a lorry and left with a learning disorder. He received no compensation, nor did he ever learn to read or write.

His mother and three sisters gave him unconditional love, which he has spent his life trying to recapture. Sometimes, he received it from his supporters, from women or from friends, with virtually all of whom he eventually wore his welcome out.

There were occasions when he was wronged. A manager, described by a high court judge as "incompetent, reckless or worse" as he banned him from holding a company directorship for five years, left him with severe financial bruising.

No sum of money, of course, could ever compensate him for the aching loss of the irrecoverable: his game at peak performance. It is a loss he cannot shake hands with and it is one which has cost him money, respect and the warmth which offers comfort to sport's great champions of yesteryear.