THE WHIRLWIND breezes into town next month aiming to be billed as the Regal Welsh Champion.

For while Jimmy White will be in exhibition mode against John Virgo at the Lancashire Evening Telegraph's Regal Snooker Classic, he is still deadly serious about his sport.

And the £370,000 Welsh championship at the Cardiff International Arena - where White launches his challenge against Barry Mapstone next Tuesday night - offers him the next chance to end a near six-year wait for a title, and to earn some valuable ranking points.

"I am hoping to come to Blackburn as Welsh Regal champion," confirmed White, looking to get on a roll for the season's climax in April.

For that's when all eyes focus on the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, the home of the Embassy World Championship - White's Holy Grail.

Six times a runner-up and five times in a row up to 1994, White is surely the best player never to have won the coveted crown that John Higgins and Ken Doherty have wrested from the ownership of Stephen Hendry in recent years.

White knocked out world number one Hendry in the first round last spring to whet the appetite of his fans once again and suggest that 1998 could, at last, be his year.

He followed that up with a win over Darren Morgan before Ronnie O'Sullivan - White's only rival as the game's most spectacular player - ended his run en route to a final place of his own.

"When I came up against Ronnie I played at 100 miles-an-hour for some reason. I don't know why and it won't happen again," said White. The Whirlwind certainly doesn't figure as high on the Beaufort scale these days and his more measured approach has convinced the television pundits that he still has it in him to win the big one.

And White, recently honoured with the MBE for his services to snooker, certainly won't write off his world title dream.

"I can definitely win it," he stressed. "My ambition is to become World Champion and I am practising very hard.

"The will to win keeps me going. I should have won it a few times already."

White has given himself six more years to lift the Embassy trophy before hanging up his cue and ending one of the most colourful and popular careers snooker has known.

The Tooting-born left-hander was destined to make his name and fortune in the game after spending most of his formative years in snooker clubs by day and card schools by night, stories chronicled in his recently published autobiography Behind the Cue Ball.

He was good for the sport and the sport was good for him as his 'who-dares-wins' approach helped light up snooker's boom years in the late seventies and eighties.

A natural successor to Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins, White's style contrasted magnificently with the more calculating approach of Steve Davis, Terry Griffiths and Cliff Thorburn.

While the old guard have made way for the new generation of potters, like O'Sullivan, Higgins, Stephen Lee, Mark Williams and Paul Hunter, White has hung in there.

He is currently 12th in the provisional world rankings and on target to regain a top 16 spot which carries qualification into the later stages of all the major tournaments.

This season has been one of steady accumulation of ranking points rather than title challenges.

But White, who won all three of his singles matches as England lost to Northern Ireland in the Nations Cup in Newcastle on Monday, raises his game on the biggest stages and it would be foolish to write him off at the Crucible or at Wembley where he plays in the Benson and Hedges Masters next month.

Before that comes his date at our Regal Classic at King George's Hall in Blackburn on February 3.

And it's one White is looking forward to as he never tires of the exhibition circuit and getting closer to the spectators who have made him 'The People's Champion'.

"I love it. I'm playing John Virgo and we always have a great time. We are very good friends," he said.

"We actually play a best-of-seven frame match which is very serious and then we have a bit of the pantomime business and a bit of fun.

"I enjoy playing with John. We've never done an exhibition without the crowd loving it."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.