Ronnie O'Sullivan's mother Maria has opened up about the moment she told her son that his father Ronald had been jailed for murder.

At the time, a 16-year-old O'Sullivan had just turned professional and was preparing to travel to Thailand for a tournament. Maria put off telling her son about what had happened to try and "protect him", something she admits was a mistake and believes he never forgave her for.

O'Sullivan's father was jailed for killing the driver of gangster Charlie Kray – the brother of twins Ronnie and Reggie - and spent 17 years in prison. "I remember when it first happened," Maria said in O'Sullivan's new Amazon Prime documentary, 'The Edge of Everything'.

"I got a phone call early hours of the morning, I just knew something wasn't right. I couldn't tell Ronnie and he was due to go to Thailand about three days after. His manager, Barry Hearn, phoned me up and said 'Maria, you've got to tell him'.

"I said 'Barry, I can't. It will break his heart, I can't do it'. I said, 'Can you send Ronnie to Thailand?' I was trying to protect him. I thought if he goes there three days early he won't know what's going on.

"It's going to be a bad dream and he'll think his dad will come back out again. It's going to be a mistake, he won't know any different. John took him to Thailand and then Barry said, 'Maria, you've got to get on the phone and tell him because it's going to be in all the papers tomorrow'.

"So I phoned up and John picked up, I said 'put him on the phone'. I said: 'Ron, your dad's in prison'. He said: 'What for?' I said: 'They've done him for murder'. And I heard him screaming down the phone, I said 'John just hold him, hold him'."

An emotional Maria continued: "It was hard for me to tell him because I knew how close they were. And John held him and he just collapsed in the hotel room. I shouldn't have sent him. My regret now is that I should have told him straight away.

"But I thought I'd protect him and it was wrong - I don't think he ever forgave me for that, Ronnie. He said I should have told him but I couldn't. And that's my regret I've got, I just didn't want him to get hurt."

When the documentary was finished, O'Sullivan watched it for the first time with his mother and the director Sam Blair and admitted he got "emotional". "It was quite weird," he explained. "The one bit that I got emotional about was that my mum held on to something for 32 years.

"I looked at her, and went are you crazy. She said, 'I don't think my son's ever forgiven me for that'. It wasn't even in my head. I never even thought about it. She started crying, I started crying. There's a couple more times you cry it out, but yeah, it gets you like that, I suppose."

Ronnie O’Sullivan: The Edge of Everything is available exclusively in cinemas across UK & Ireland on November 21 and launches on Prime Video on November 23.