Running: The Autobiography by O'Sullivan Ronnie

Author:O'Sullivan, Ronnie [O'Sullivan, Ronnie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2013-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

11

ME & DAD: OUTSIDE STORY

‘In the gym with Terry. He worked me very hard. Was nearly sick.’

One of the first things Dad and I did when he was home on day release was go for a run. Well, not so much a run, more a jog. It reminded me of all those times he made me pound the streets when I was a kid. But back then he wasn’t keeping me company on foot, he was chasing me with a car!

When he came out on day release he was overweight – had a belly on him and was a bit jowly. I’m not sure why. For so much of his time in prison he was fit as a fiddle, ripped, and didn’t have a spare ounce on him. Maybe he allowed himself to go to pot in his final months inside.

The paparazzi managed to get shots of us having our little jog, and it got into the papers. The tabloids love any opportunity they get to tell Dad’s story. In February 2009 the Daily Mail showed him in all his tubby glory with his blue Hackett’s shirt on, blue gloves, shorts and woolly hat under the headline: ‘Snooker champ Ronnie O’Sullivan’s father celebrates freedom after 17 years . . . by going jogging’.

They reported that Dad was now out on his rehab scheme and that he was due back in jail at the weekend. Dad didn’t give them a quote, of course, but Mum issued a statement through World Snooker saying: ‘We prefer to have our privacy at this time. We just want to be left alone.’

After day release came weekend release. Then, in 2010, he was finally given his full release on licence – this means that he’s a free man, but if he commits any crime, or doesn’t report to the police station when he’s supposed to, he can be recalled to his life sentence at any time.

That was a fair old day when Dad was allowed to leave the prison premises for the first time. I didn’t know what to expect. I turned up at Sudbury prison in the East Midlands, pulled up outside, walked over, got Dad and boom! We’re off in the car. It was 2009.

I could probably play Through the Keyhole with Britain’s prisons, I’ve visited so many of them. At least a dozen, probably more. Sudbury is my favourite – it was open, which meant they were on their way home. It was a lot more relaxed than other prisons. Sudbury was so different from the likes of Long Lartin and Belmarsh, high-security prisons that were prisons within prisons within prisons. As you walked through one set of barriers, you were met by another, then another. For 15 to 16 years I visited Dad in that kind of prison, and you’d feel you were never going to get out of there – even if you were just visiting!

At Sudbury, there were no gates, no nothing. You could walk out and you’d be on the road.

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