PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH
People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many.
George Best at 58: Malcolm Brodie in the Belfast Telegraph, March, 2005: "I caught up with Best, now 58, and my friend from his schooldays at Lisnasharragh, as he travelled by train from Liphook, a picturesque Hampshire village, where he has been resident at Champney's Health Farm for the past 22 months .He was en route to London to attend a business appointment..." Presumably that appointment was something to do with his appearing in the Daily Telegraph as a columnist.
George Best at 20: an interview I had with him at the time (which, perhaps surprisingly now, assumes that £60,000 is a fortune.
You would have to look hard to find his muscles, but he's the stuff dreams are made of. Perhaps he dreamed himself one day, long ago, in that small home in the Cregan district of Belfast. An impossible dream, perhaps like this:
I see myself walking through a big city. My girls are the most beautiful. My suits are the most splendid. I wallow in money, and I wallow in admiration. People write to me from all over the world – 300 letters a week. And when I run onto a football field, they ooh and they aah and they think, THERE goes the most splendid sight in the game. Well, it may have been a dream once, but it all came true. Absolutely, dazzlingly true.
And George Best, 20, boutique owner, Manchester United player, and man about many towns is the living, breathing, smiling proof.
He thinks even now about his old age, and old age is possibly 25. Who knows? And he says, “I’ve been lucky. I don’t worry about my future but I like to think that by the time I am 25 I won’t have to rely on playing football. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to play it, but I’d like to be so well off that it would not bother me.”
So you say, “What would you consider a reasonable amount of money?”
And he says quietly, confidently and so matter-of-factly that it has all the elements of a sudden electric shock:
“By 25 I would like to have £60,000 behind me.”
And you say, “What?” And he says, “ - £60,000. And I think I can do it. Then, of course, after that, if you use your head, £60,000 can make more.”
George Best is the peculiar compound that high-class footballers are made from.
He is already showered in money and he runs a Jaguar. But when you ask about his favourite food, he says, “Braised steak.” And you say, “What was your favourite meal in Ireland?” Well, he replies, he can never remember what he ate at home. Toast. That’s it. “I don’t know why but that is what I remember.”
Of his arrival in Manchester: “I was very shy. I did not want to know Manchester. I wanted to go straight home. But I said, ‘Well, I have to live here, so I might as well get used to it.’ I was afraid to speak to the big-name players. I felt, well, who am I to talk to them? Even in training, I was afraid to speak to them, or even look at them. And when I got into the first team, I could not believe I was as good as them. But now I believe in myself and I think I am as good as anybody.”
George Best in action is a little like a ballerina dancing Swan Lake with a cast that has not had time to rehearse. He appears on occasion to dance around opposition a little longer than is necessary to prove his greater dexterity.
True?
“When I’m on the field nothing gives me more pleasure than making a fool of somebody. In football there are little things that go on that nobody knows about. They’re trying to get you needled and make you lose your temper. And if you lose that you’re half lost because you are mad and rushing and making silly mistakes.
George Best has never met the Beatles but he could easily be mistaken for one of them. The same sharp and shaggy image. The same placid acceptance of life. It is the sort of image that draws fan-mail no other top-rank footballer receives.
It is often from girls aged 12 to 19 in whome he generates waves of emotion.
Like this from London:
“Fourteen! What a useless age. Perhaps in the far distant future I shall find someone to replace you, but until then I live for the day I will meet you. I wrote a fabulous poem about you in the school magazine but I do not think the English teacher quite agreed somehow. Love, love, love Hilary. Reply please, as soon as possible.”
Like this from Holland:
“I find your hair very excited (sic). I admire also your football knowledge. I am 13 years old and I find you an excellent footballer.”
Like this from Manchester:
“Dear Georgie, I am a great admirer of you and I expect you have plenty of letters from toher girls like me, but could you please give me some information about yourself? Other girls at our school are crazy about you. I think your hair is fabulous. Please don’t ever have it cut.”
Like this from Liverpool:
“This letter is being typed by girls in the typing department. One girl is quietly going to sleep after making a pig of herself on pickled onions and she now reeks of them. You see, what happened was this this girl decided she wanted some cheese, so on our break we bought that, and the onions. My personal comment – I think you are great. I only go to the match when you are playing. Last time, I nearly got my teeth rammed down by throat for cheering in the wrong section.”
Like this, from two girls in Hereford:
“We, the undersigned, would like to say from the bottom of our hearts down to our bones (enriched with nourishing, marrowbone jelly) that we luv Georgieeee. We both rush to the telly as soon as we know you are on. Why do you run away as soon as the camera finds you? You hide your face in your beautiful locks. We think you are gorgeous looking. We shall bow down towards Manchester at sunrise each and every morning, and as the cock crows, we shall be up bowing and scraping to thine honourable abode in the dark and mysterious North.”
Show business.
Not bad for an Irish lad of 20 who hopes to have £60,000 at 25.
But then, when you take a Beatle head and a lithe body and attach them to two of the most educated legs in football the result is bound to be an explosion of the magnitude of George Best.
The only man around who does not need a dream.
Geoffrey Mather © 2007
March 2, 2007