WHERE is the next Stephen Hendry coming from? Well, China, probably, if the man himself is to be believed. “I haven’t seen any in the whole of the UK, never mind Scotland,” the seven-time world champion tells Herald Sport in an interview to promote his diverting autobiography, Me and the Table. “Working as a pundit I don’t really know too much about the amateur game but the only youngsters I see coming through are from China.”

The reasons for this, of course, are complex and multi-faceted. Back when 18 million were tuning in for that breathless black ball 1985 world championship final between Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis, there were only four terrestrial channels and snooker was cheap to televise. “These days you can watch many different sports, you are saturated with it, 24 hours a day,” says Hendry. “And young boys all want to be footballers because you don’t even need to be that good and you can still earn £100,000 a week.”

And while the SFA currently invest in performance schools for our aspiring young footballers, it certainly doesn’t hurt that in some parts of this populous Asian nation this parlour sport finds a place on the curriculum. “They can actually play snooker and learn it as part of their school day,” says Hendry. “In terms of Scotland, I don’t see an immediate solution. You just have to wait and see if any talented ones come through. It might be down to someone, maybe myself or someone else, to start doing something to try to get kids interested in the game again.

“But what I would say, is that there is almost £20m in prize money on the snooker circuit in a year so if you are a young boy or girl who is talented and want to give it a go there has never been a better time to be a professional snooker player,” he added. “When I started there was never a great history of people doing well in snooker from Scotland. By chance I got a table for my Christmas, if I hadn’t got that then none of this would have happened. There will be kids out there with major talents who maybe don’t even know it yet.”

As it happens, Hendry is something of a China expert these days, touring the nation regularly as an ambassador to promote eight-ball pool. A rather unforeseen spin off from his days holding the snooker world in his thrall, these trips often involve him in some semi-serious competition. “I will sometimes play a local champion in a shopping mall or a furniture mart, something pretty random like that,” he said. “I still enjoy a wee game of poker now and then but I’m not very good and being Scottish I don’t like to lose that much money!”

An aptitude in snooker was once said to be a sure sign of a misspent youth, but by comparison with whiling away the hours on Fortnite or Instagram, Hendry’s upbringing almost seems innocent. By the age of 14 or 15, his head teacher was excusing him school to go down and compete in tournaments. No huge lover of school, so convinced was he that snooker was his pay check that he didn’t turn up for a couple of his O level exams. It is the kind of pathway which would put the fear of God into any sporting parent.

“Nowadays, you can just pay your money and turn pro, go to the cue school and try to qualify,” said Hendry. “But in those days, to turn pro at 16 you had to win your national championships. In terms of sacrifice, I wasn’t doing the same things my mates were doing. Parties, girlfriends, underage drinking, whatever teenagers do I wasn’t doing any of it. But at the time I didn’t feel like I was missing out because I was just so in love with playing snooker. By the age of 14 I had stopped doing homework and stopped studying - as soon as I had any spare time I was up to the local snooker club. I was fortunate my parents never forced me to stop playing snooker and told me to carry on at school. Nowadays, that probably isn’t the best advice. I basically had nothing else to fall back on.”

For all the prodigiousness of Hendry’s talent, it always helps when you can get up close and personal with your greatest competition. Such it was for Hendry when he embarked on a six-match week-long Scottish tour of one-on-one contests with Steve Davis during 1986 with the backing of s manager Ian Doyle and the Daily Record. Davis ultimately pocketed the entire £30,000 which was up for grabs, £4,000 for each session win, plus £6,000 for the overall winner, but it was Hendry – soaking up hints and tips from the master which would serve him so well over the following decade – who was ultimately the winner. It all puts a different kind of perspective on that thanksgiving exhibition match-up between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, or even the Scotland football team being prepared to take punishing defeats of top-class international nations like Belgium.

“It was a masterstroke by Ian to come up with this tour, I am sure when Barry and Steve first got offered it they thought it was just six nice exhibitions for Steve,” says Hendry. “But for me it was like going to school, learning what it took to be the best player in the world. I got smashed up and down the place almost every night but I was learning all the time - even though it wasn’t pleasurable. The Woods- Mickelson thing is just a glorified exhibition match. If it was they who were putting up money then it might be a bit more serious!”

As well known as Hendry’s story is, from his Junior Pot Black days to the humbling 13-2 defeat to his countryman Stephen Maguire as he signed off from the Crucible in 2012, there are plenty of other diverting details here. The first words his boyhood hero Jimmy White ever uttered in his direction, for example, ‘F*** Stephen’ (his introduction to the young Scot was standing in the way of a night out); the dramas over his priceless £40 Rex Williams cue that he picked up from the Classic Snooker in Dunfermline but got lost in transit; the yips which ultimately put paid to his hopes of prolonging his career in the manner that contemporaries such as John Higgins, Mark Williams and Ronnie O’Sullivan have done.

With that trio of forty-somethings sharing ten of the titles on the tour last year - Higgins pipped at the Crucible for a second successive year - another reason why the new generation of UK talent isn’t coming through is simply because the older ones are refusing to go quietly.“These three you mentioned are 42, 43 and together they won more than half the tournaments last year,” says Hendry. “So they are still the very best in the world, although Mark Selby is No 1. I don’t see that changing this season or the season after either. Do I miss it? I miss playing at the Crucible, the big pressure situations. I don’t miss so much the six hours a day practising.”