This article informs readers on the personal information of Mark Selby and his wife, Vikkie Layton.
36-year-old professional snooker player Mark Selby was born on June 19, 1983, in Leicester, United Kingdom. Mark Selby has been ranked as world’s number one on multiple occasions, he has won a total of 22 ranking titles, placing him eighth on the all-time list of ranking tournament winners.
Selby began playing pool at the age of eight and snooker aged nine. Abandoned by his mother at the age of eight, Selby lost his father to cancer when he was 16, after which he lived with a family friend and snooker coach Alan Perkins. He contemplated suicide after his father’s death, but Perkins encouraged him to devote himself to snooker, telling him his father would have wanted him to keep playing and trying his best. Two months later, Selby joined the main professional tour, having left school with no qualifications. His nickname, “The Jester from Leicester”, was given to him by snooker compere Richard Beare because Selby liked to have “a laugh and a joke” with him
In addition to his four world titles, he has won the Masters three times and the UK Championship twice for a total of nine Triple Crown titles, putting him on a par with John Higgins, and behind only Ronnie O’Sullivan, Stephen Hendry, and Steve Davis.
Selby is also a pool player; he was the 2006 World Eight-ball Pool Federation champion, and the runner-up at the Chinese Eight-ball World Championship in 2015, making him the only man to have been world champion in both snooker and pool.
Selby has been a fan of Leicester City F.C. since childhood. His 2014 World Championship victory happened on the day that Leicester City celebrated their promotion to the Premier League with an open-top bus parade. Two years later, he won his second world title just 13 minutes after the team sealed their first Premier League title. Selby is also a fan of darts and has played in exhibition matches at Ibstock in Leicestershire, beating Eric Bristow in 2007 and taking on Raymond van Barneveld in 2009.
Selby was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to snooker and charity.
Who is Mark Selby’s wife
Selby’s wife is Vikki Layton, who often attends his major matches, is a former Irish international pool player born in Ipswich. They began dating in 2006 after meeting on the professional circuit. They became engaged in August 2010 after Selby proposed on a gondola in Venice, and were married in Cancún, Mexico in May 2011. They have one daughter, Sofia, who was born in 2014.
