Trapped in an old familiar act, just like Sinatra

Published on Sunday 27 November 2005 02:08

WHEN George Best did theatre appearances in the early 1990s, the evening would open with film clips. The first was taken from the FA Cup tie in 1970, when Best - back after a long suspension - scored six goals for Manchester United against Northampton. "Imagine what he might have done if he'd been match fit," the commentator observed.

Terry Wogan used the clip when he introduced Best on his chat show in 1991 with the line: "What happened to the man Pele himself called the world's greatest footballer?"

It must have been difficult, living a life between "what happened?" and "what might have been", but that was Best's lot. I met him in 1993, when he appeared at the Glasgow Pavilion for an evening of anecdotes. Naturally, he was asked about that drunken nine minutes on Wogan.

"I did get a lovely phone call from a couple of nice friends," he said. "Oliver Reed and Alex Higgins. They both said: 'Bestie, you fuckin' looked all right to us, pal.'"

There was something odd about that night at the Pavilion. I interviewed Best directly before he went on stage. He was sober and considerate. The champagne had not been opened. Moments later, as Best sat down alongside the diminished figure of 'Slim' Jim Baxter, he was slurring, half-coherent.

He had the view, common among ex-players, that football had lost something. "I quit because the game was changing, and it wasn't fun any more. They were talking about systems and fitness and stamina. They stopped talking about flair and charisma. And I was just a little bit disillusioned with it, so I disappeared. I opened a club in Manchester for a while, and then I went to America."

Onstage, he said that he went to America because he saw a billboard proclaiming: "Drink Canada Dry". So he decided to start at the top, and work down. Best was the first footballer pop star, and often compared with his team-mate Bobby Charlton, who had the skill, but not the beauty. Charlton was professional, Best was gifted. At the time of our meeting, a story was running that Best had been disrespectful to Charlton. Not true, he said.

"They asked me what I thought about Bobby Charlton, and I said he was a miserable bastard. The thing is, Bobby and I are quite good pals. We didn't mix socially, we were both in the same side, but when we finished training, Bobby went home to his wife and kids, and the rest of us went out gambling, shagging and drinking. So all this crap that you read is a load of rubbish. But he still is a miserable bastard, yes."

Best's playfulness was spiced with resentment about his public image. He seemed bemused to find that he was still fodder for the tabloids. The stories, he said, had little to do with reality.

"In all honesty, you can't do what I did on a pitch and go out till three, four, five in the morning. I never ever went out after a Tuesday. I did my wining and dining on a Saturday night after the game, Sunday, Monday, maybe Tuesday, but after that, I was like a monk. You can't do it as an athlete and be the best."

The real pressure, he said, came after football. Former players have to find something to give them the buzz. "Most of them find it very difficult, so they turn to whatever - whether it's gambling or drugs or drink. I almost fell into that. Well, I did for a long time.

"I see friends of mine, people I played with, who are out cleaning windows or sweeping the roads. It's terrible to see them. I consider myself very lucky that I've got through all that and survived."

He talked about drink: he had tried to quit many times, but had settled on a formula. "If people buy me drinks, I don't drink them. If I feel like a drink, I do. If I don't, I don't. Everyone who's been through the problems knows that the rule in AA is one day at a time, and even before I heard of the AA or had an alcohol problem, I always lived my life that way."

Then he said a strange thing. His life was great: his work, health and his family couldn't have been better. "I'm just trying to tidy up a few loose ends to make sure that if I disappear a couple of weeks from now, I know my son's been taken care of, my girlfriend's taken care of, and my friends and family." He added that he was not planning to disappear. "Oh no. I'll be around for a long time. They told me I wouldn't make 30, and it's coming up to 50. I don't want to go anywhere. I'm enjoying it too much."

Thinking about the way that Best behaved onstage, it's hard to resist the conclusion that he was trapped in an act. "It's like Sinatra," he said, "people want to hear the old stories."

The end of the show was his My Way: the anecdote which defined his life, about the night he went to a casino in Birmingham with then-girlfriend Mary Stavin, and won 25,000. Returning to his hotel at 4am, he was greeted by an Irish porter, who professed delight at meeting his hero, and appeared in Best's room with a bottle of champagne and three glasses. Best tipped the porter, and waited for him to leave. "He's backing out the door, and he's had another look at Mary in the see-through negligee and the 25 grand and the bottle of Dom Perignon, and he says: 'Mr Best, can I ask you something that's been bothering me for 20 years?'

"'What's that Paddy?'

"He said: 'Where the fuck did it all go wrong?'"

Best existed within the punchline of that story - between "imagine" and "what happened?" - for longer than he graced the turf. He was, we can be sure, painfully aware of the irony.