SIDELINE CUT:The last great anti-hero of the baize seems perpetually torn between the heady urge to express his brilliance and the moody intuition the game is not for him, writes Keith Duggan

WHEN WILL Ronnie O'Sullivan ever learn? You may have seen the latest flagrant violation of etiquette and lapse in judgment from snooker's dark star. There he was out in China after losing a tournament match, so bored by the length of the questions posed by an admiring legion of local press that he resorted to entertaining himself in muttering sexual innuendos related to the microphone he was holding and, in the assumption his audience could not understand him, extending lewd invitations to nobody in particular.

His remarks would be nothing out of the ordinary in many a rap lyric or in the punchlines that pack the masses into film theatres around the world whenever a new Farrelly brothers show opens. But this was not Hollywood, and in this latest abdication of responsibility, O'Sullivan comes across as arrogant, condescending, insulting and stupid.

In this age of all-pervasive media, it seems downright bizarre that a seasoned practitioner in front of cameras worldwide could not have imagined his descent into schoolboy smut would not be picked up by the sharp antennae of cyberspace. Perhaps he did not care.

The oddest thing about the video clip posted on most mainstream newspaper and news websites yesterday is O'Sullivan appears to be going through a kind of Gar Public and Gar Private episode. In between guffawing with mirth at his daft departure from sane public conduct, O'Sullivan clears his throat and answers in polite cliches the (undeniably tired) queries about his loss to Marco Fu.

He is not in belligerent mood; if anything he seems amused and a little antic, like a man suffering severe jet-lag - which perhaps he was. Wasn't insomnia one of the many afflictions to hit The Rocket since he began storming through the snooker fraternity over a decade ago?

Maybe it is because of the Irish surname but many people here who have no particular interest in snooker seem to hold Ronnie in affectionate regard. In its heyday, snooker as a television phenomenon was surely about the characters as much as the stick-craft.

Snooker was and remains a game - a pursuit - more than a sport: any activity in which Big Bill Werbeniuk, the late, affable, beer-guzzling Canadian was a top-ranked star, cannot reasonably claim to be a sport despite the brilliant hand-to-eye co-ordination, the astonishing nerve and the competitive instinct all its best players have in common.

The huge appeal of watching snooker surely lay in taking sides with Taylor over Davis or White over Hendry or O'Sullivan over Ebdon and in figuring out their next play as they worked their way through the maze of snooker balls. Anyone who has leaned over a snooker table even once can appreciate how absurdly difficult the game is: it is like gazing out across a football field. The way the most brilliant and instinctive players could clear tables seemed less about sport than about art. Watching Alex Higgins roam like a panther around a table was, at its very best, a thrilling and scarcely comprehensible experience.

O'Sullivan could instil that sense of mystery even among the very best of his peers. Former world champions watched his flamboyant range of shots and spin, and the way he deconstructed a table made cuemen-turned-commentators such as John Parrot and John Virgo genuinely marvel.

And O'Sullivan played at a pace that seemed reckless. He came on the scene when snooker was losing its grip on television ratings and he played "young", as though aware that out there was a perpetually restless public, ready to channel-surf the moment their attention began to drift. He played as though intent to keep us watching. And, like Ziggy Stardust, he played it left-handed. Just for variety.

The golden age of snooker was surely partly down to economic circumstance and choice. It happened just before the advent of the satellite and digital technology, with its obscene range of choices and a promise to show sport from everywhere all the time.

In, for instance, November of 1985, if you were broke and living in Ireland or England, a dozen of Tennents and Thorburn v Stevens (the Maple Leaf derby!) on BBC 2 passed for a half-decent night in. And if you weren't flush, a visit to the local snooker hall, carrying your weapon in its sinister, narrow case, was as good a way as any to kill a night.

Not any more. Not any more.

Presumably snooker still has its loyal fans but in an epoch when the public demands everything instantly, who has time to sit and watch Mark Williams standing like Rodin's Thinker over that troubling yellow? We are too restless. We are too impatient.

With the demise of Higgins and Jimmy White, Ronnie O'Sullivan arrived as the last great anti-hero of the baize. He was handsome and charismatic and even more temperamental than his predecessors. It didn't hurt that his background seemed transported from a Martin Amis novel; Ronnie came from the London of underworld glamour.

His adored father made his money in the sex shops of Soho but blew it all in a violent nightclub fight (while on the town with Charlie Kray) that left one man stabbed and dead and O'Sullivan snr banged up for 18 years. The snooker phenomenon handled that notoriety with considerable grace and was honest about the difficulties he has faced in his private life - the battles with addictions and depression and trying to handle what was tantamount to his father's disappearance from his life.

At his best, he has been a bright and vulnerable and highly likeable representative of a game whose calm and cerebral appeal have been all but drowned in the wave of hype and noise the big sports command. On his down days, though, he has cut a bleak figure and has looked all but unreachable, most vividly when he shook hands with a puzzled Stephen Hendry, retiring from their match trailing by just four frames to one, clearly unable to continue with what felt at that moment like a charade of a life. He has spoken before about his ambivalent attitude to snooker, torn between the table's magnetic draw on his instinctive brilliance and a moody insistence the tournament life, with all its repetition, no longer holds any appeal for him.

Had O'Sullivan's transgression in China occurred a decade ago or during the game's halcyon days, there would surely have been a much greater furore. It could be that nowadays nobody really expects anything but the worst behaviour from those who are talented and lucky enough to hear the applause from the galleries and stands filled with ordinary people.

But that was always the most graceful thing about O'Sullivan. He always behaved as though he was just one of the crowd who just happened to have this preposterous talent for a game that in spirit belongs more to the Edwardian era than to the Internet age.

He wore his flaws and weaknesses with considerable dignity and never pretended to be perfect. And he sure didn't look it this week, got up in his bow tie and chortling his blue asides for a worldwide audience; the bedevilled genius snookering himself yet again.

"Men!" old Rose declares in The Krays. "Mum's right. They stay kids all their f***ing lives."