SIDELINE CUT/Keith Duggan:By any standards, the return of Alex Higgins was a curiosity. For some months there had been promises that snooker's great glory, and its true tragedy, would be appearing at one tournament or another. But as the dates grew closer his name was scratched from the programme. Even Olivier could suffer from stage fright.

Then, on Thursday night, to virtually no fanfare, he began playing again. At least the comeback, as it was labelled, was true to Higgins's spirit in that it was unpredictable and out of the blue. It was like picking up a flier advertising a reading by JD Salinger in the local civic hall and turning up in disbelief to actually see him there, reading happily, good as gold.

There has been so much lurid publicity and rumour and counter-rumour about Alex Higgins's devastating fall from grace that the myth has become so much larger than the man.

Given the twilight world he is supposed to inhabit, it was hard to picture him sharing a room with ordinary people. And it was certainly impossible, given the library of stories that have circulated to imagine him doing any thing as normal as playing a few frames of snooker again.

In the tabloid world, Alex would have stepped into the bright snooker hall like an aged urchin, in tattered clothes, pleading and raging against the world. That is, after all, the only way he has been presented to us over the past 10 years, lurching from one bad dream to the next, his life unravelling in almost comically unhappy fashion.

Every so often some greasy sleuth or other would track him down to a rundown provincial hotel reminiscent of Fawlty Towers from which he had just been evicted for terrorising the bridge club or something equally ludicrous. He was smashed. He was down and out. He was sick and on the brink. And finally, he was hustling for 10 quid a frame. And he was losing. That was the Higgins portrayed again and again, most vengefully in the London tabloids because it made for great headlines and also fitted in with the weirdly Puritan sense of morality that informs the red tops.

Although veiled in mock sadness, there was an unmistakably gleeful air about many of the depictions of Higgins's latest misdemeanour. And also a definite lecture, a message that it was Higgins's innate rebelliousness, his anti-establishment streak that caused his life to lapse into ruination.

Many years have passed, after all, since Higgins was at his most lordly. The Thatcher administration was still quite young then. But 20 years after his last world championship, Higgins continues to generate more publicity and more fascination than the sometime Iron Lady. Unlike her, he has managed to roll with the decades.

There has to be something significant in the fact that snooker and darts, the ultimate stay-at-home, late night, hushed-up games underwent revolutions during Margaret Thatcher's years in power.

LIKE her, they remain indelibly associated with that era. Within the confines of snooker, so do many of Higgins contemporaries.

Steve Davis, who subdued Higgins' ebbing brilliance with his own excruciating, learned game, is an exceptionally decent guy who still plays the circuit but you can't look at him now without feeling as if you are in a time warp.

Alex Higgins, for all his travails, at least beat that pitfall. Mugged by life he may have been, and continues to be, but at least something about the man still seems urgent and present day.

That was why it was no real surprise to see the incredible cross-section of people that showed up to hail the conquering hero on Thursday night at DCU. There is a certain generation of females for whom Alex will always be the dangerous young sex symbol, riding high on their list of favourites alongside Omar Shariff. And for their husbands he will always carry a few of the qualities they liked to believe lurked deep within themselves - glorious recklessness and off-hand charm.

That was the thing about Higgins in his pomp; he seduced everybody. So a fair number of couples whose prime coincided with Higgins's turned up to pay respects or whatever.

But there also came a new generation, kids who didn't look as if they would be interested in snooker. And it was clear that they hadn't come to leer at a freak show, to see if the reports were true. They came to see somebody who clearly meant something to them for probably a million different reasons.

It wasn't a particularly big gathering but that never really matters when it comes to snooker where the electric charge is generated through the silence anyway. The arena was too big and too polished to be really suited to snooker, a game that lends itself to plush carpeting like no other. But as Higgins was introduced, there was a definite intimacy in the place as people craned forward for a long awaited or indeed first glimpse.

And when he eventually materialised, some 25 minutes after the agreed match time, the sight was heartening.

Never plump, he remains strikingly gaunt with cheekbones so pronounced that Pete Postlethwaite is a shoo-in for the lead role when they make his a film of his life. And when in repose, his expression is of perpetual worry. But he is still recognisably Higgins, with the panther's prowl around the table, a lazy and sure walk. Even at his height he managed to combine the best of Sid Vicious and Quentin Crisp, at once full of punk attitude and pure luvvie mannerisms.

That singular charisma he still holds.

THOSE for whom Higgins is a hero in life regarded Thursday evening as an apparition. His first few shots drew audible breaths purely because they were Higgins's shots occurring in front of them. After he got flowing, he showed that he had a little of the old magic left in his bones. In the end he won 3-2 and even if there was the suspicion that his opponent Ken Doherty - a guy with endless class - was suitably charitable on the way, everyone was still delighted.

It is too early to know what this will lead to, if anything at all. Whether there is any way back for Higgins in the modern game of percentages and practice is something only those close to him know. Who knows if he has the nerve, the game, the hunger or the stamina for it? To see him play competitively again would be miracle enough. By all accounts he persists in being an absolutely perplexing human being to know. He is lucky in that there seems to be no end to the number of people willing to give him countless chances.

So on Thursday night, sober and quite sombre, Alex Higgins played snooker and the London tabloids were not interested because modest attempts at redemption do not make for salacious reading and do not fit in their view of how the world should work.

Even if it was for one night only, the Hurricane vented himself and still people felt a residue of the old chill. It is hard to see who of today's sporting gods will command such awe and affection two decades down the line.