Ronnie O’Sullivan and David Beckham reveal their secret bromance… including how they bonded over cups of tea, frames of snooker and trips to Manchester

Ronnie O’Sullivan is more comfortable with red balls than red carpets. “If I had looked at the contract and it said you had to do a premiere, I probably would have said, ‘I’m done with that,'” says the seven-time world snooker champion. ‘It’s not my thing. I can’t handle people being nice to me very well.’

Tonight in London’s West End there are plenty of people who are just that – and none more so than David Beckham. The former England captain happens to be the executive director of O’Sullivan’s riveting new Amazon Prime documentary, The Edge of Everything.

And as they share a stage for a question-and-answer session after an exclusive screening of the film at the Odeon Luxe in Leicester Square, we learn that Beckham is one of the Rocket’s biggest fans.

“When I wasn’t playing football, I was playing snooker,” says Beckham, who is the same age as O’Sullivan and grew up close to the snooker star’s home in Chigwell. ‘I have always been a fan of Ronnie and have been able to spend some time with him over the years.

‘One of my favorite nights as a Manchester United player was when we were playing in London, we went for a few beers and I ended up back at Ronnie’s house. His mother was making us a cup of tea and we had a few glasses. That was one of my favorite nights because I got to spend a few hours with Ronnie and get to know him.”

It turns out that night wasn’t a one-off. Sitting with Mail Sport in a seventh-floor suite of a five-star hotel in Leicester Square, O’Sullivan shares his own story about his secret bromance with Beckham. “We met in Charlie Chan’s (Walthamstow nightclub) and we were just chatting,” he recalls.

‘He said, ‘Come to Manchester’, so I went there and stayed with him for two or three days. The fame was excessive. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I’m not really cut out for that kind of thing. I’m running for the exit.’

However, he can’t run for the exit tonight. O’Sullivan is the star of the show and he has attracted quite the crowd, including Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, who appears in his film.

Beckham – whose production company Studio 99 made the documentary – will be joined by his ex-England teammates Alan Shearer and Ian Wright. Lioness Alessia Russo is also in attendance, as are England rugby stars Owen Farrell and Manu Tuilagi. From snooker, Stephen Hendry, Jimmy White and Judd Trump are all in attendance.

“F****** crazy, right?” O’Sullivan says to Hendry as he surveys the great and good who have gathered here just for him.

Sam Blair, the documentary’s director, also mingles with the guests in the room. “Ronnie was an absolute dream to work with,” he told Mail Sport. ‘It was a unique experience. I don’t know if anyone else could do what Ronnie did. Not only how open he was, but he also worked wonders in front of the camera. It was mind-boggling.”

The miracle Blair is referring to is that O’Sullivan managed to win his record-equalling seventh world title at the Crucible last year, even though he had cameras in his dressing room and was on the microphone during matches. For O’Sullivan, however, the additional intrusion was merely a motivation to give the film a fairytale ending.

“As soon as I let the cameras in, I wasn’t going to break down and give a half-hearted performance,” he says. ‘I knew I had to give 100 percent because I knew I had to watch it back and I didn’t want to cheat the audience.

“It made me win that World Championship. I don’t think I would have won the title without that pressure to perform.’

However, that victory came at a price. One of the most powerful parts of the documentary is when O’Sullivan appears on the verge of a panic attack in his dressing room on the second day of the final against Trump. “I feel like I want to cry,” he tells his psychiatrist, Doctor Steve Peters. “I feel like I don’t want to face it.”

Looking back on that moment, O’Sullivan says: ‘I got stage fright and I only had that twice in the Crucible. The first time was the last session of my first final against John Higgins. It’s quite scary.’

So The Edge of Everything is not a comfortable watch for O’Sullivan. As well as his meltdown in the Crucible, it also covers his father’s life sentence for murder and his own problems with drink and drugs.

“It wasn’t a great experience seeing it again for the first time,” he says. ‘It was quite harrowing. It really influenced me. I called Sam and said, ‘I don’t think I’ll play snooker again, mate. I’m not sure I like what I see. I could have a much nicer life.”

‘Visually you could see that I went through it often. I had a very special, close bond with my father. So because he wasn’t there, I thought half of me had been cut out and taken away. It was just terrible.’

O’Sullivan insists he has now come to terms with what he saw and believes he can continue playing for another 10 years, although ‘five would probably be enough’. While he withdrew from the Champion of Champions event in Bolton last week because he felt ‘exhausted and stressed’, he will return to action at the UK Championship in York, which starts this weekend.

However, the sport’s schedule is a hot topic at the moment, with World Snooker at war with stars as they try to skip tour tournaments to play in mega-money exhibitions in China.

“If I can’t do what I have to do, which is play a lot in China, I will never play again,” says a resolute Rocket. “We’re kind of at a crossroads now.”

But next year all roads lead back to the Crucible – the scene of such astonishing footage in the documentary. But having just been reminded of the torture he endured to claim his seventh world title, O’Sullivan is wondering if he has what it takes to dig deep and win No.8.

“I’m sure I’ll be pitching and playing again,” he added. ‘But I don’t think I have one left in me, if I’m brutally honest with you. I don’t think I have one left in me.

‘I don’t know if the juice is worth it. But that’s what I thought in 2011 and I’ve won a few since then. It’s strange how things can turn out.’