AFTER a nine-year engagement, snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan and his actress fiancée Laila Rouass have called it quits.

Former Holby City star Laila took to Instagram Stories to make the announcement on behalf of the two yesterday.

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The 50-year-old, who also played Amber Gates in Footballers’ Wives, wrote: “After almost ten years of love and memories, Ronnie and I have decided to go our separate ways.”

The Sun understands Ronnie, 46, has moved to Liverpool, leaving the marital home in Essex behind. But the pair have been steadily drifting apart for months.

The split comes after Ronnie’s father, Ronnie Snr, 67, announced his own romance with 34-year-old Instagrammer Tiffany Kushner.

An insider told The Sun: “It’s been a blow to poor Ron. Especially in the same week his dad is showing off his new wife.

“Laila was a source of support for him, but they broke up.

“At first they were telling friends Ron wasn’t training, hoping things would get better between them. But now they’ve decided to stay apart.

“Ron has calmed down a lot and he’s a really good guy. It seems like a friendly parting, so hopefully we don’t see him go back to the bad old days.

Ronnie, from Chigwell, Essex, played his first World Snooker Championship at The Crucible aged 17 in 1993 – and he has won the title six times.

But his early career was marked by alcohol, drugs and depression, as well as a torrid family life.

In 1992, dad Ronnie Snr, a sex shop entrepreneur, was jailed for stabbing mobster driver Charlie Kray to death.

But Ronnie has always been at his father’s side, dedicating his first world championship title to him in 2001.

And as The Rocket’s career reached new heights, without his father to guide him, he began to enjoy the high life a little too much.

Ronnie, who has three children of his own, said: “I was just partying a little too much and like I said when I won that tournament I thought I had made it.

“I brought in some money, I had a nice house, a nice car, I was single. So I could do whatever I wanted when I really loved. I probably picked the wrong company, but it really got to me. I took my eyes off the ball.

“I wasn’t really focused on snooker and probably wasted five years of my career really messing around.”

“MAKE A LITTLE TOO MUCH PARTY”

At the 1996 World Championship, O’Sullivan found himself in a press room when his guest was asked to leave.

He later admitted to being assaulted and was given a £20,000 fine and a two-year ban by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association.

The same year, his Sicilian mother, Maria, was sentenced to a year in prison for tax evasion.

When she returned home, she kicked out Ronnie’s girlfriend, Sally-Ann Magnus, who had moved in while she was in jail.

Ronnie’s alcohol and drug addiction eventually led to their separation shortly before the birth of their daughter, Taylor-Ann.

She told how she grew up with her father who repeatedly let her down, including when he once promised to wave to her on TV.

Taylor-Ann, 26, said: ‘I sat by this TV and waited – but he didn’t. It really upset me.

Now a mother herself, she told The Sun in 2018 how she had only met her father 12 times in her life and claimed he had never met her granddaughter Zarah-Ann.

The Uber Taylor driver added: “Having a really shitty parent showed me what’s important in life.”

After serving his pool ban, Ronnie won the Irish Masters against Ken Doherty in 1998 – but was stripped of the title after testing positive for cannabis.

Over the next two years, he carefully juggled his drug use around key tournaments. Writing in his 2014 autobiography Running, he said: “I remember going to every world championship and thinking, ‘I can’t wait for this tournament to be over’ because there’s no no more drug tests, I can go out and break it’.

“I got caught once in my career, but that’s it. I was getting tested between events, and trying to judge it perfectly so there were no drugs in my system.”

Soon his habit of 15 pints of Guinness a day and back-to-back joints got the better of him – and he was begging for admission to rehab in 2000.

He later said, “First thing in the morning, I would get up, have a drink, have a joint, just to function all day. Which never did me any good because I was like, ‘I don’t want to have to depend on that stuff’.”

He had a stint at The Priory Clinic in 2000, and later that year won the Champions Cup.

After that win, he said, “I’ve been on a treadmill of turmoil which has been a nightmare for my family and friends. This victory is for the people who have stuck with me through all my troubles.

“TREADMILL OF TORMENT”

He met his serious second girlfriend Jo Langley at Narcotics Anonymous – and he credited her with helping him beat his addictions.

Despite his cleanliness, Ronnie still had mental health issues. In the UK Championship quarter-final at York in 2006, he went out in the middle of a game against Stephen Henry.

He would later say: “I had a lot of problems at home, with my family life. I didn’t even want to be near a snooker table but had to go play because it’s work.

Ronnie and Jo had daughter Lily in 2006 and son Ronnie Jnr in 2007 but split after eight years together. It happened shortly after Ronnie was spotted leaving a parking lot with a mystery brunette at 1am.

He said, “You break up sometimes. You go in different directions and it’s not my fault, it’s not his fault, that’s how it is.

After his exit from the 2008 China Open, he threw a strop in front of the press. As his answers were being translated into Chinese, he pointed to his groin and asked, “Do you want to suck on that?” Wanna come suck on that later? “Does anyone want to headbutt me? Suck my dick.

He later apologized for the outburst, saying his father would have been disappointed. Ronnie Snr then played Cupid for him and Laila, a former favorite in the men’s magazine.

The actress, who competed on Strictly in 2009, was house hunting and ended up searching Ronnie’s house.

She said: “It happened by accident. His father showed me around Ronnie’s house, who told his son he had met me. Ronnie called the estate agent and asked me to go out through it.

“When she said he played snooker, I said, ‘Yeah, but what does he do for a living?’ I had never heard of him because the sport doesn’t doesn’t interest me at all, even though Ronnie seduced me at snooker.

Laila, who already had daughter Inez with convicted fraudster Nasir Khan, told how she and Ronnie struggled to be a blended family.

Last year, she explained: “It’s a lie if people tell you that blended families are easy. He struggled with it, I struggled with it, and Inez struggled with it.

“I FELT IMPOSSIBLE”

“It takes a lot of work and you have to be honest with yourself and with each other.”

She added: “At first I thought, ‘This guy is not a stepfather’. He is a fantastic father to his children, but he was struggling with his own relationship with his family.

Laila had also bumped the head of Ronnie’s outspoken mother Maria, who dubbed her as**g.

Ronnie’s sister Danielle said in 2020: ‘Ronnie has helped mum so much in the past. But when he asked her for £15,000 last year he told me she said, ‘I’m not giving you money for that fucking shit!’

“She showed me Laila’s number saved on her phone as ‘The revolving f***y’ and apparently told Ronnie, ‘She’s just a prostitute, she’ll sleep with anyone’.”

But the pair have held each other through thick and thin, with Danielle admitting: “Ronnie is so in love with Laila.”

The actress leaned on Ronnie as she and Inez were caught up in the Barcelona terror attack in 2017 where 13 people were killed.

Ronnie kept them calm on the phone as they hid in a restaurant freezer. He said: “I felt helpless. I just wanted them both to be safe. We just kept talking. I was very nervous for them. She then began returning to her hotel amid the pandemonium. We continued talking until she came back into the room.

Laila confessed the attack left a mark on her mental well-being. She said: “You start thinking something catastrophic is going to happen. I get on a plane and I think it’s going to crash.

But despite their bond, both hinted as recently as 2019 that they were in no rush to get married.

Laila said, “I really should prepare for a wedding. We take advantage of our time, so there is no rush.

Ronnie added: “If something ain’t broke, why fix it? If it works, why change a winning formula? »

Now that the relationship is over, let’s hope Ronnie keeps his formula on the pool table.

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