A bigger legend than the Stone of Scone

While his time at Hibs is chronicled in a succession of sufficiently boozy urban tales there is a rather more pastoral and certainly less celebrated chapter included in his Scottish football diaries.

Although Best ended his career with a dizzyingly eccentric array of clubs, from the San Jose Earthquakes to Bournemouth, little is known about the time he provided locals in Perthshire and Angus with the combined thrill of seeing one of the world's greatest-ever footballers stepping out with a former Miss World. This is the story of the day El Beatle came to Burrelton, wearing the colours of Scone Thistle.

And his Tayside odyssey didn't end there. Best also starred for Arbroath Vics against Arbroath FC to celebrate the junior club's centenary in August 1982, scoring twice in a 4-3 victory. Hence the question that will greet the 50 or so punters at Scone Thistle's Whyte & Mackay Tayside District Premier League fixture against Forfar West End this afternoon, at least those who purchase the match programmes that were being lovingly stapled together by honorary president Scott Farquharson last night.

Without wishing to spoil the fun, the answer groups Hibs with a couple of clubs whose names lend further romanticism to the legend of George Best - Scone Thistle, Perthshire's oldest football club, and Arbroath Vics. The lowly mourn Best too.

It was as if Best was selecting the most random parks possible to conduct what had grown to be a drawn-out swansong, one which had begun, somewhat tragically, an entire decade earlier, when he was just 26.

In Belfast today they will finally carry him home but in Burrelton and Arbroath there will remain parks that are memorials to all that is thrilling in football, and which don't necessarily carry the grandeur of those stadiums in which his greatest work was done. These undistinguished arenas are two reasons why Best's funeral will likely rival Princess Diana's in its capacity for provoking public grief. He was an angel who flew too close to the ground, and at Burrelton Park, the home of Burrelton Rovers, he had rarely flown more off-course. It was like seeing a pink flamingo wading across the River Tay. Best even made it to the mouth of said river, turning up at Dundee's Dens Park for a club gala day.

There is little doubt as to why he embarked on this surreal tour. Best needed the money. His career at Hibs had ended messily, and hardly with distinction, in the First Divsion. Yet Billy Bingham had still considered including Best in the Northern Ireland squad which spent the summer of 1982 at the World Cup finals in Spain.

Instead, he kept faith with the group of players who had earned qualification, and Best was there only as part of the ITV commentary team. On returning to America, his base at the time, Best was hit by a claim for 17,996 from the Inland Revenue, who said the money was owed in tax from his two seasons at Fulham. The Revenue insisted on the full amount being paid, so, for Best, it was time to hit the road again. The A94, which cuts through the Strathmore Valley, being one of them.

Best was paid 1,000 for his Arbroath Vics run-out but he appeared genuinely interested in the occasion. The then club secretary Jimmy Smith was an associate of Bill McMurdo, Best's agent at the time. He chanced his arm and called McMurdo, and a guest appearance was duly arranged, one which coincided with a similar appointment further south in Burrelton.

Arbroath Vics, however, got better value for their money: although Best agreed only to a 20-minute cameo appearance for Scone Thistle, the next day, revived by the bracing North Sea air, he managed the whole game, and a couple of goals, for the Vics.

"He wasn't too old at the time and looked in pretty good shape," remembers Neil Hardie, the current club secretary. The only disappointment was the size of the crowd, which numbered no more than 2,000. A trio of Ipswich stars - Alan Brazil, John Wark and George Burley - were late withdrawals, and Best carried the game on his own. His attention to detail was almost heroic, and he pitched up at the Vics social club later for an interview session with star-struck locals. As regarding the question which burns on to this day - where is the top worn by Best at Gayfield Park? - Hardie offers a reminder of the humble world in which clubs like the Vics operate: "I don't know, we would have needed it for the next game." All that remains is a team picture, with Best grinning impishly in the front row, and a match programme.

Precious little survives from his Scone Thistle appearance either, save for burnished memories. But when it was revealed earlier this week that Best's funeral would be held at Stormont Castle a co-incidence announced itself - the Perthshire club's base is on Stormont Road.

Ian Roxburgh was mine host at Scone's Aerodrome Inn in Scone, and the brains behind a charity football tournament which brought together the cream of junior and amateur football in Perthshire. The year Best was approached to play the competition, known as the Victoria Inn tournament, was hosted by Burrelton Rovers, and included the local team, Coupar Angus, Vale of Atholl, Scone Thistle and Scone amateurs.

Best and his then girlfriend, the 1977 Miss World Mary Stavin, pictured left, were not the only celebrities present. Paul Sturrock, on his way to a championship medal with Dundee United, was paving the way for a later career in management as coach of Vale of Atholl. Weeks later he kicked off a momentous season with United.

But it wasn't Sturrock, and sometimes not even Best, who caught the eye. Stavin and Best had met at Belfast airport, and were first pictured together in June 1982. Two months later they were in Scone. It was slightly tricky: Best was still married to Angie, and Stavin was living with another footballer, the then Brighton player Don Shanks. There were few places in Britain as attractively anonymous as the Wheel Inn, the motel in Scone where they stayed.

"You would expect Miss World to be stuck-up," recalls Farquharson. "Nothing was further from the truth. She sat at the side of the pitch chewing blades of grass, and talking to my wife." Later that evening they returned to Scone. For one night only the Aerodrome Inn claimed the title of Scotland's glitziest venue. "As many people turned up to see Mary Stavin as George Best," says Farquharson. "It is not everyday there is a Miss World in the village, even if it is Scotland's biggest village." Stuart Cosgrove, head of Channel 4's nations and regions department and a native of Perth, remembers it being "quite a talking point". He added: "Suddenly loads of people were lording it up, going around Perth saying 'oh, I have played against George Best, you know'."

Another well-known face also made an appearance that weekend. Jock Wallace, the then Motherwell manager, made a bee-line for Scone, eager to sign-up Best. Not, it must be recorded, to bolster the Fir Park side he had only recently joined, but for an exhibition match. The stellar group moved along to the Murrayshall Hotel, with Best, on the brink of bankruptcy, unable to resist his generous instincts. "I remember George sitting at the bar - he didn't drink all weekend, just knocked back cups of tea - feeding pound notes into the old folks' tin," says Farquharson. "He was stuffing them in. He was a hell of a nice guy."

For John Davidson, the Scone Thistle manager, it was a day he would never forget. Here he was, in charge of what was then classed an Under-27 juvenile side, and with George Best named in his list of substitutes. The former Manchester United legend turned up in his playing kit, supplied by the glazing firm Weatherseal, and patiently waited for his chance.

With 20 minutes remaining of a match against Scone Amateurs they were winning at a canter, left-back Stuart Fraser was given his own claim to fame: hooked for Bestie.

On George came. Within minutes, he made it 14-0. "He went past about five players, drew the keeper and then nut-megged him," recalls Farquharson. "I remember some of his team-mates, the more imbecilic ones without a brain, screaming at him that he should have passed it."

Few stand on ceremony in Scone. But today, as in Arbroath, you suspect they will.