This is how Ronnie O’Sullivan remains both an unparalleled talent and a regular guy

They say you should never meet your heroes. In my line of work, despite the kinds of sporting stars I come across as standard, it’s useful to say that’s quite easy for me. I came into this job because I’m a huge sports fan. I stay in it because I am fascinated by the grit, darkness and flaws of the human condition.

To be truly great often takes a selfishness and self-belief that are compelling traits to study, but rather unattractive in the flesh. Indeed, it’s a natural and sometimes disappointing side effect of this job that one becomes very difficult to impress.

So it is not often I am nervous about meeting someone for the first time. Mostly, I expect a sanitised, polished version of what used to be a real person, micro-managed by a media machine that has sandpapered all the rough, interesting edges away.

So the fact I wasn’t expecting that from Ronnie O’Sullivan meant I was surely setting myself up for disappointment. Ronnie is something of the sporting anti-hero. Unfiltered, raw, no-nonsense. He is the every man. For once, I really wanted to like the person I was interviewing, and that is rarely a good place to start.

When he walked into the room we had hired to record our Eurosport podcast, without a manager or PR agent, the signs were good. When he asked where the kettle was and insisted on making his own cup of tea, it looked even better.

By the time we sat down, we had discussed running PBs with Greg Rutherford, my co-host, we had casually chatted injuries, cycling and how much he hated winning his record-equalling seventh world snooker title. And that was before we had pressed the record button.

Any fear I had that Ronnie would be a bit too cool for school, a disdainful rock star in disguise, were already obviously