The Amazing Windshield Factor

This is my favourite chapter from Jimmy White's book "Behind the White Ball". It's an amazing story and I hope you enjoy it.

This all happened well before Alex was banned from my local pub and the bookie's next door. The ban occurred when Alex was visiting me for a day or two. I had a little bit of business to attend to, so first I dropped Alex off at the Queen Vic, telling him I would only be an hour or so. When I returned, Alex wasn't anywhere in sight. Before I could open my mouth the publican, a kindly man, noted for his patience and tact said, 'He's gone, Jimmy, he's walking home.' He shook his head. 'I'm sorry to tell you that we had to ask him to leave.'

I didn't even need to enquire why. Alex has been banned from more hostelries up and down and sideways across the United Kingdom than the entire Millwall supporters' club. It's not so much that he drinks and gets out of control, as much as the acid way he has with words that can soon have people roaring with indignation.

But the events I am about to relate took place before Alex was banned, and shortly after Maureen and I moved to the country, where we hoped to get on well with our neighbours, not to bother the police too often and to bring our girls up in quiet and harmonious surroundings.

On the night in question, Peewee, Alex and I popped out to dust a few. In due course, when the publican indicated that he wanted to close up, I asked him to order a taxi. He looked at me with a pained expression. 'This isn't London, you know, Jimmy,' he said. 'This isn't just south of the water. This is deep in the country. Injun territory. Round here, there's no such thing as a taxi after nine o'clock at night.'

'What about chucking-out time? Like when you've had too much to drink? How are you supposed to get home, then?' 'You walk, Jimmy. In the country, people think nothing of walking five or six miles. You'll soon get used to it,' the publican chuckled, wiping down the counter.

Peewee and I had gone into a state of shock, but Alex is used to walking everywhere, loves it, he says, which no doubt he does, sober. But we'd had a few and, besides, it was raining.

When we went out my car was the only one still parked there. "the other buggers haven't walked any deeper into the heart of the country, then,' said Peewee, pulling up the collar of his denim jacket. 'Come on, Jimmy, I ain't walking in this, it's chucking it down.'

We all piled into the car and started off for home. I know I was acting irresponsibly, but there wasn't another car on the road, and the rain-slicked black tarmac stretched ahead for mile after empty mile. We would take it easy. It was just us cruising gently through the night to the hiss of the tyres and the swishing of the windscreen wipers until I took a wide bend too fast and lost it. I braked hard, and the car went out of control, rearing up a grassy bank, to sideswipe a long low wall at the top. I shot forward and wrapped my chest around the steering wheel. In the back, Peewee, who was the only one to have strapped himself in, which is typical of him, shot forward, banged me on the back of the head, before recoiling back, where he stayed against the back seat, the belt having ridden up under his chin to half-strangle him. But Alex just sailed through the air with the greatest of ease, hitting the windscreen with his head on his way out. Fortunately, the windscreen was the kind that springs out on impact. Alex followed it, gracefully taking a horizontal flight path through the gaping hole and disappeared.

I sat in the driving seat, stunned and fighting for breath, convinced that all my ribs were broken. (The large, circular bruise made by the steering wheel was there for weeks, a painful reminder whenever I had to lean over the edge of a snooker table.) Peewee gurgled in the back as he fought to untangle his neck from the seat belt. And as for Alex - well, there could be little hope for him, but I shouted into the darkness, 'Alex! Alex! Are you all right, mate?'

Nothing. Total silence. I struggled to open the car door, but it was bent inwards and jammed. 'Alex!' I shouted again, before putting the car into reverse to case off the wall so I could climb out through the other door. The wheels spun on the wet grass, then the car backed away with half the wall coming with it. Faintly, I heard someone calling from somewhere in the darkness, 'I'm all right, James. Do not upset yourself.' Then there he was, crawling through the gap in the wall, up over the bonnet and in through the empty space where the windscreen had been, and through the crazy back and forth swipe of the windscreen wipers.

He was radiant in the glow. Paradise by the dashboard light, as Meatloaf once sang. 'I'm born again!' he cried, settling himself into the front seat. And, as he picked off twigs and leaves, he kept up an ecstatic mantra: 'I am alive! I have relived! I am not lost anymore! I am. . .' '

The wheels spun again, we shot backwards off the bank and landed on the road with a chassis-crunching 'whump'.

'. . . reborn!' Alex warbled in my car. 'I've a new lease on life, James! I've been saved!'

'Good,' I said. The wipers, which I couldn't turn off, were now flailing about madly inside the car. Peewee was screaming, 'Shut the eff up, Alex!' But Alex was unstoppable. 'Saved! I'm saved! I'm saved - I'm saved - I'm saved - I'm s-a-v-e-d . . .' to the rhythm of the wipers. I was still a mile from home, concerned with nothing but getting the car off the road and out of sight as quickly as possible. Pulling into the drive, I pressed the button to open the garage doors, and shot what was left of the car inside. As I did so, the engine fell out. 'The entire car rose up from the rear, like a whale in its death throes, before settling back down, steam and petrol vapour rising in clouds, oil puddling on to the garage floor like dark blood. 'Hallelujah!' cried Lazarus O'Higgins.

I just sat there, visualising what would almost certainly have happened if the engine had fallen out as we careered along the road that last mile away from the scene of the crime. The car would have tipped over and we would have been very dead.

Inside the house, I got on the telephone to an all-night taxi service in London, insisting that someone had to come out at once. I didn't tell them it was to drive me back to find the windscreen, which had the road-tax disc attached with my car number on it. A couple of hours later, I walked back into my house, having shoved the incriminating windscreen into the garage, along with the dead car, to find that Alex had set the balls up. His miraculous escape - without as much as a cut or a bruise - had turned his head and he wanted to play me for £300. An odd sum, but that was what Alex in his deluded state had hit upon, and he was ready.

'I have a new lease of life,' he said. 'Luck is on my side.' Furious that he wanted to gamble with me after such a traumatic accident, I snapped and slung him out of the house. Apparently quite unperturbed, Alex wandered off into the night, to assault the front door of the only neighbour that I don't speak to . 'Wake up! It's Alex Higgins seeking sanctuary! Bless all here!' he shouted as he banged on the door and rang the bell. From the lawn, he could see lights come on upstairs, and then the front door opened.

I've just escaped with my life!' Alex said melodramatically. Jimmy White's just attacked me! Now hitch up the horses and take me to Reading.'

'This was Alex at four o'clock in the morning, asking a total stranger to drive him a hundred miles, to Reading of all places, to descend on another friend. Astonishingly, my neighbour got dressed, got out his car, and took Alex where he asked. He was either too stunned to argue, or he wanted to get this raving madman away from his family - or perhaps Alex had indeed been born again, and his already legendary powers of persuasion had been magically heightened. Maybe luck was on his side.

The next day, Alex telephoned from Reading as though nothing had happened. 'Hello, James, how are you?'

'That is always the story with Alex. Whenever we argue, I take no notice because the next day it will be forgotten. Seven years on, when Alex is reminded of that strange night, he says, 'Don't be ridiculous now, James. 'There was no stone wall. I did not fly out of the car, as you are well aware. I used to be a jockey, so I braced myself with my knees, feet and both hands, exactly like riding a horse, it's the training you know. You did not throw me out of your house and it was my manager, Dougie, we telephoned to come over from Barnet and fetch the broken plastic numberplate, not a taxi. Reading was on an entirely different occasion. I was due to play at the Hexagon there and you had promised to take me, but you were hanging out with some racketeers and never came back. As you know, I have never missed a match yet. At six a.m. I went for a walk, looking for the railway station because I had to play in a tournament the next day. A mile or two down the road, there was a woman who happened to be in her garden, doing a little early gardening, so I went up and introduced myself, though she recognised me, of course. I asked if I could come in and telephone for a taxi to take me to Reading. You've got it all wrong, James. Again!'

He's a master. I shake my head and laugh because I will never forget the sight of Alex crawling back in through that windscreen. Seven years later, the stone wall is still down - and, for the first time, my neighbour will know where to send the bill. And what's more - Peewee remembers the story exactly as I do. 'That's two against one, Alex, old mate! But I know he hears only what he wants to hear.