Bestie: Football's Original Superstar

It was two o'clock in the afternoon just off Fenchurch Street in the heart of the City of London and George Best was once more attracting a crowd.

Half a dozen pints of foaming Guinness were lined up in front of him like soccer players singing the national anthem. As many shots of vodka completed a formation with which Best was entirely familiar.

Another Best booze-up? Another one of those days which so often turned into a fortnight of fierce drinking, the memory of which would never be more than an alcoholic blur?

No, as it happens, this was a day when Best touched not a drop.

A day he turned up on time and perfectly sober for a signing session on a book celebrating Manchester United's first Championship title for 26 years.

It took only a glance at the queue which stretched like a coiled python more than 100 yards outside the bookshop to recognise the enduring nature of Best's appeal - an appeal which makes his death at the age of 59 so hard to bear.

So why the booze?

Simply that every 10th person or so who filtered past for more than two hours felt compelled to go into the adjacent pub and return with a drink and words to the effect of "Thanks for the great memories, George."

He didn't want a drink, all he asked for that day was a cup of tea but the story simply demonstrates how Best had become a prisoner of his own image - the one which decreed that he and booze were inseparable.

Still, 'Thanks for the Memories' is not a bad inscription for the tombstone of a footballer Pele once described as "the greatest player in the world" - even if it doesn't begin to tell the inspiring and equally demoralising story of certainly the most gifted, bravest and enigmatic player the British Isles have ever produced.

At lunch that May day 12 years ago Best was in fine form - charming, cheerful and philosophical in the glare of the prodigious fame he found increasingly difficult to handle.

He told of the senseless morons who, merely because of his fame or his association with Manchester United, would take a swing at him in countless bars, out shopping or even once as he queued at a local chip shop.

He told of the health clubs, the clinics, the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings he had attended. "I might have gone to Alcoholics Anonymous but I found it pretty hard to be anonymous," he joked.

He admitted he had tested the implants he had sewn into his stomach to see how many drinks he could have before he was sick.

He acknowledged the help he had received in more than 30 years of self-abuse. But equally he accepted that he would never be rid of the drinking curse.

The drink wrecked his career, devastated his features, put him in jail on a drink-driving charge, ruined his first marriage to Angie and his second to former airline hostess Alex and prevented him from forming a close bond which he always craved with his son Calum.

It saw him wreck his own liver and then abuse someone else's after a transplant gave him renewed hope of a normal life in his later years.

In the end the alcohol which was such an integral and vibrant part of his youthful dalliances in Manchester all those years ago became his poison - slowly corroding the body and eventually his mind.

In the end, for all that the final infection was not alcohol related, the drink killed him, the suppressants he took to safeguard his transplant having ravaged his immune system.

It is one of sport's modern tragedies but the one person you would never have found voicing regrets or pining over lost opportunities was Best himself.

As a player he showed the bravery of a lion in the face of the most intimidating defenders - as a man self-pity was not part of his make-up.

He never dived, never feigned injury, never tried to get a fellow professional into trouble.

Equally he blamed no-one for the excesses for which he was famed - not his family, nor his working class background in Belfast where he was the only contemporary from his community to pass the 11-plus.

Perhaps his most endearing characteristic was recognising he was the architect of his own downfall, though it should be said there was no end to the hangers-on and opportunists ready to make a buck at his expense, just as there was no end to the women inclined to spend the night in his company.

That he indulged so many of each was a tribute to his stamina as well as his kindness and generosity.

The greatest sadness of all, perhaps, is that Best will be remembered as much, maybe even more, for the blondes and the booze as the football.

But what football.

From those first innocent days in the Sixties, when he stayed in Mrs Fullaway's digs with David Sadler, Best displayed the poise, balance and control of a genius.

"He had ice in his veins, warmth in his heart and timing and balance in his feet," Danny Blanchflower once remarked.

The former Tottenham legend left out the fact that he also possessed a thunderous shot in either foot, was good in the air and was a fearless tackler.

For all the stories of him not turning up for matches and jetting off to Marbella, he was also renowned as the most dedicated trainer in the club.

The goals, meanwhile, are seared into the memory - that jinking, slanting run from the halfway line against Sheffield United, driven wide by defenders but still able to unleash an unstoppable shot from an acute angle.

That exercise in composure and control on a mudbound pitch against Chelsea when again he left defenders in his wake before dummying the goalkeeper to all but walk the ball into the net.

Those six in the FA Cup against Northampton and the night he turned from being merely a star into 'El Beatle' as the Portuguese newspapers were to name him after he had scored two goals in the Stadium of Light as United beat Benfica 5-1 in the third round of the European Cup in 1966 - a victory which propelled him to the front as well as the back pages.

Precise lobs, deft back heels, thunderous volleys - they were all part of the Best portfolio.

But perhaps most of all on the pitch he will be remembered for the solo goal in extra-time which killed off Benfica in the 1968 European Cup final at Wembley and brought the most prestigious prize in club football to England for the first time.

Back in 1993 I asked him to write a foreword for a souvenir publication about United.

What he remembered about that goal? What he recalled most about that heady night at Wembley and the team which Sir Matt Busby had built following the flames of Munich?

"It was a long time ago, I can't really remember that much," he said wearily. "You write it and I'll sign it."

The ocean of drink had blurred the memory, the zest for life was on the wane, though the mind was still sharp as anyone who witnessed him polish off the cryptic crosswords in the national papers would testify.

Unfortunately, for all his attempts at a cure - the patches, the pills, the clinics, the implants, the transplant - Best just couldn't give up drinking.

In his heart of hearts he probably never wanted to despite the endless promises, usually after another broken engagement or public embarrassment.

But he never did, even when his liver was wrecked. Even after the gift of a dead man's healthy organ.

He hated himself for that.

His second marriage faltered in acrimony and violence, Best sporting black eyes proving he took as good as he got.

He took to living at a friend's health farm and must have been the only resident to polish off a bottle of white wine before breakfast.

In truth, he became a tragic caricature, a man whose reckless living, or chronic illness depending on your point of view, tested the sympathy of the British public.

And all of us who knew and loved him, however fleetingly, were filled with dread.

Now those fears have become cold reality. As the news came through, however, I remembered the words of Sir Matt Busby when asked in later years of the sleepless nights Best had caused.

"We had our problems with the wee fella," admitted Sir Matt. "But I prefer to remember his genius." So should we all.

Thanks for the memories George.

By Frank Malley, PA Chief Sports Writer ~ Sporting Life ~ 26/11/05