George Best has died. Rather like the events surrounding the death of the Princess of Wales I must admit to not understanding the upswelling of emotion. I have never been a great football fan but have recognised the fascination of an iconic figure whose fame drives them off the rails to alcohol. In fact George did a fair amount of his later drinking in Surbiton pubs, especially the Victoria, from which I think he had been banned.
There is a very good history on George Best in Wikipedia.
George Best himself was keen to ensure that we all saw what drink had done to him, as a warning. The Mirror printed pictures, at his request.
What an irony that one of the Britain’s greatest sportsman should die from the illness of alcoholism the morning after the first night of the Government’s new 24 hour drinking laws.
1 comment:
I am also not a football enthusiast but I can appreciate Georges skill. What annoys me is the way some of the media have hijacked the story for their own political agenda. In particular the front page article of last weeks Sunday Times was one of the most patronising articles I have ever read. see
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1903611_1,00.html
David C
or read The Sunday Times December 04, 2005
Belfast gives George its bestBRYAN APPLEYARD
MISERABLE, inept, stone-cold Stormont’s parliament building gazes over the heads of the people of Belfast. Lord Edward Carson, frozen in bronze, harangues them for ever. The forbidding mile-long Prince of Wales Avenue separates the people from those who would rule them. Everything about this place seems to sneer at the people below: “You’re just not good enough.” But that was then, the days of Empire; this is now, the days of superstars, when only the people are good enough. And so, yesterday, George Best was sent to eternity via Stormont’s Great Hall. And the Not Good Enoughs came to stand in the wind and rain to see him off.
Diana’s was the most emotional funeral I have ever attended, the Pope’s the most awe-inspiring. But Best’s was the most strange, suffused as it was with the modern cult of stardom and the ancient tribal cults of Ulster. Many red hands, symbols of the province and the old Protestant ascendancy, were draped on the steel barriers at Stormont. And many footballers’ wives, caked in makeup, swathed in furs, teetered on high heels up the perilously slippery steps to the Great Hall.
Well, it was cold, wet and perhaps they all watched it on television. But in truth I felt there was something a little forced about this strange event. They were willing Best to mean more than he did. They were willing him to be good, which he wasn’t. One friend of mine, who knew him all too well in his later years, described him as “the most complete bastard I have ever met”. But, as they say, when the fact becomes a legend, print the legend.
So let him be good in every sense. The northern Irish have suffered enough, they deserve their soccer saint. They deserve better than Stormont’s cold and ugly walls. They deserve “George Best”, the myth.
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