Georgie Best & his 8 lb liver

[crafty cokcney]

Thanks for the memories George

For me growing up in London in the 60's George Best was football. He inspired all of us as kids to play football every minute of the day so we could try to be just like him and try moves we had seen on tele on our mates. Everybody wanted to be George Best.

I had constant David Coleman or Brian Moore play by play commentaries running through my head as I played, with me being George. To say he had an influence on me playing football would be an understatement, the same as millions of other people who watched and admired everything he done when he was on the field.

Today we remember George as the most complete and naturally gifted player to ever lace up a pair of boots and try not to be affected with what went on in his personal life. As Best said himself, he took football off the back page of the papers and put it on page one.

Besty had it all, on and off the field. When asked by a reporter once.."George, is it true you have slept with four Miss Worlds..?" George replies.."No that's not true at all,...I never showed up for the last two..?

For those of us that experienced Best in one way or another during our lives...we were truly blessed. A true legend in every sense of the word.

God bless you George and thanks for the memories.

RIP

 

[cside17]

Re: Georgie Best and his 8 lbs liver

It only lasted about 10 minutes. Pretty good though!

 

[Guinness]

Georgie the Belfast Boy

Like my mate Sage, I too became a Man Utd. supporter because of George Best... Usually you tend to follow your Dad and support his team, but Liverpool were a team I couldn't take to... In Northern Ireland everyone followed an English based team and a Scottish team depending if you were a prod or a Catholic (which was normally Rangers or Celtic)... At that time living in Belfast in the early to mid-80's, 16 year old phenom Norman Whiteside was the youngest player ever capped in a World Cup match... He also went on to a dazling career at Man Utd. like Besty... However, all of the old footage of Besty and the fact he was a Belfast idol never got lost... I'll never forget my grandfather (another big Liverpool supporter) telling stories of how Besty playing at Windsor park and Takingthepiss out of Scotland... Although, funny enough he never mentioned him TTP at Anfield!!!

BTW, Cside good stuff, that video was brilliant... At first a bit of a tear jerker, I laughed my arse off at him taking off his boot before passing the ball... Pure dead magic!!!

RIP Georgie

 

[dazza]

Re: Georgie Best and his 8 lbs liver

Rise and fall of George, simply too good to be forgotten

Three meetings in 37 years chart decline of a teetotaller to hardened hedonist

Hunter Davies
Saturday November 26, 2005
The Guardian

I first interviewed George Best in 1965 when he was 19 and had got into the Manchester United first team, where he was being hailed as the new boy wonder. In football, since it began, we have had boy wonders, on the hour, every year. Nothing unique about that. George was attracting attention because of his natural ball skills, gliding down the wing and leaving seasoned, hardened defenders on their bums. And also because of his looks and personality. He was darkly handsome, had a Beatles haircut, lots of girls were already fancying him, but he was yet to be known much outside the back pages.

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While thrilled to be in the team, he was being a very good boy, in awe of the manager Matt Busby and of the senior players. I met him in his digs, after training one day. It all now sounds so innocent and naive. Which it was, more or less.
"I thought I wouldn't be able to talk to Denis Law and Bobby Charlton, the ones I hero-worshipped as a kid, but they're just ordinary blokes in the street. They're all married in the first team, so after training I get a bit bored. I thought at first they didn't want me to mix. They do, but they've got families. The afternoons I either play snooker or go bowling. Pictures perhaps once or twice a week. I read a bit. Horror stories, comics, that sort of thing.

"I don't drink or smoke. Perhaps on a rare occasion I might have a lager. Then it gets back to the boss, Mr Busby, that you're drinking. I share digs with another footballer. I would like to have a flat on my own. But the boss thinks there might be a temptation. Perhaps when I'm 21. I've no complaints. I like my landlady.

"I save most of my money. Last week I made £175, which was unusual, but then I had three matches, one international. Often it's just £50 a week. One day, I'd like to be a millionaire." It's interesting now, the meagre money, the non-drinking, and also the use of "boss" not "gaffer". When did that come in?

Three years later, having been elected European Footballer of the Year, he had moved out of the sports pages on to magazine fronts, become a household name, an image in households who had no interest in football. He was hired to do modelling, gave his name to a chain of boutiques. He was followed everywhere. His latest clothes, girlfriends, real or alleged, were endlessly chronicled. Long before the world had heard of David Beckham.

It could be argued that he was the first player to bring in the middle classes, but he also served as an inspiration for the lads mags which came later, mixing football with girls and clothes, drink and bad behaviour.

In 1973 I was sent up to Manchester to interview him again, now aged 26, this time with a TV crew. He had agreed to a time and place, but there was no sign of him. He'd missed training, once again. We went round Manchester, looking in nightclubs, houses where he might be asleep. I remember ringing the producer of the programme, John Birt - yes, the same, but not then such a big cheese - saying that's it, I'm fed up, I'm not being messed around any more. He persuaded me, and the crew, to stay another night. Next day we did get the interview.

Although I was pissed off by George's behaviour, I still rather admired him for his cavalier attitude to coaches and training. All the old football hacks, once his behaviour became well known, used to say how disgusting, what a terrible example for young players, and wrote endless pompous, prissy pieces on the back pages. I quite liked the way he was upsetting all the coaches. Many coaches, then and now, are pretty brutal, nasty people who scream and shout and abuse their young charges, trying to turn them into robots who will do what they are told.

I spent an afternoon with him three years or so ago, in an Italian restaurant in Chelsea. He looked well, despite all the self-abuse. That day he was holding a bleeper, ready for the call about a liver transplant. They had to wait for a sudden death, probably in a road accident, and a suitable liver.

He was also taking calls from agents and advertisers, people offering small fortunes to put his name to a new line of boots or yet another ghosted memoir. I think he holds the world record for autobiogs. It did surprise me, though, considering his age. We reminisced about his 60s days and he said he didn't actually make a lot of money, despite all the deals. The fees weren't all that amazing, not like today. He estimated that in 1968, his best year, he made in total no more than £30,000. And yet despite not having played for decades, I reckoned he was then averaging about 10 times that, every year.

George was fortunate in that a strange thing has happened to football in these past 10 years. Football's middle-class followers have remained, and they'll spend money on books and memorabilia, not just £1,000 season tickets. Modern players can become millionaires and former players can get rich as well, unlike the old days, when the money stopped, forever, and they ended with a paper shop if they were lucky. Icons from the past, if they are still with us, and able to sign their names or smile for photographs, can make a huge amount of money.

John Lennon made a joke once about being a legend in his lunch hour. George Best was probably the first player to become and then remain a legend throughout his lifetime.

 

[ginger tours]

Good, if long, article from the UK Sunday Times and an alleged incident that sums up,if true, the crazy cavaliar genius of the man.

Perhaps not the best but if you are mentioned in the same breath as Pele and Maradonna, by all of the worlds greats you truly deserve legendary status.

Rest In Peace George, as Alex Ferguson said "..you created a million memories."

George Best was much more than a great footballer, says Rod Liddle. As an icon of anti-authoritarian cool you were either for or against him

There was a tired old joke George Best told about himself whenever he was rather gingerly decanted onto one of those chat show sofas, during the painful latter stages of his life.
You know the one: he’s staying at a hotel after winning piles of cash at a casino and Miss World is lying on his bed covered in banknotes and little else. A night porter delivers a bottle of champagne to Best’s hotel room and, after pocketing a £50 tip, asks: “Well, George, where did it all go wrong?” The audience would laugh uproariously at the apparent incongruity of the question. But this weekend, a sizeable chunk of the population will be nodding knowingly to one another and muttering, sotto voce but a little smugly: “Well, that’s where it all went wrong, mate — and look where it got you.”

I suppose they have a point, these people, a point made evident these past few years. The yellowed skin, the slurred speech, the arrogantly disdained second liver, the dull murmuring of the life support machines, the grave consultants addressing the press, the end.

But would he have traded two or three Miss Worlds (he, um, entertained four) and a few jeroboams of champagne for the chance to have reached 60, or to have played top-flight football at the age of 40? I doubt it. And I sort of hope not.

I saw Best play in the flesh only once, when I was very small, and he was useless. It was an early round of the FA Cup and I suspect that the game had not quite acquired his total engagement — either that, or he was still pissed from the night before.

For most of the time he stood around, somewhere out on the wing, looking aggrieved and sulky. But that didn’t bother me one bit; much as I loathed Manchester United, George Best could, in my eyes, do no wrong — and his performance on the pitch was not even the half of it.

It was the accoutrements, the incidentals, that attracted me both as a young child and later through the protracted adolescence of adulthood; the lowering looks, the hair, the arrogance, the lifestyle, the “boutiques”, the insouciance, the utter lack of respect for — and bemusement with — authority. The shirt outside the shorts and the nightclubs and the women. The drinking, the unexplained absences, the clothes.

It is this that neatly divides us all, up and down the country. There will be those who adored Bobby Charlton — excellent footballer, could certainly kick the ball very hard — and those of us whose heart was always with Best.

Charlton, with his ludicrous hair and impeccable behaviour and impenetrable phlegmatism, had the respect of my parents and — I extrapolated — the church, my schoolteachers and the government (there was no knighthood for Bestie, after all). As a consequence, I — unfairly — couldn’t abide the man, seeing in him a dull quiescence, an obedience and a bad hairdresser.

Best, meanwhile, was an unreconstituted rebel and, better still, a working-class rebel. This was the 1960s, remember, and rebels with or without a cause were de jour for a good few of us. It did not really matter that later we discovered Best had political views that put him some distance to the right of a fish knife, while decent Charlton leant gently towards the old-fashioned, respectable Labour left.

The real political statement, the one that mattered never mind how shallow it might be, was in Best’s mere existence, in his persona — and it enabled those of us who had revelled in his battles with authority and rigid convention merely to smile sadly when he later divested himself of various antediluvian views about women, homosexuals and Ulster.

It may be a tricky thing to imagine, but back then the bolshy, fashion-plate footballer sticking two fingers up to convention was utterly unheard of and quite beyond the pale. Right now, we may be sick to the back teeth of Premiership moppets swigging down the Cristal and behaving appallingly: it has become a hideous cliché, overdone and boring. But Best was the first and, in the 1960s, such behaviour was enough to place him within the burgeoning counter-culture, whether he liked it or not.

To my mind, he became a political figure as well as a sporting figure no less than, say, Muhammad Ali or those black-power athletes of the 1968 Mexico Olympics, even if the iniquities against which Best fought were, if we’re honest, rather less oppressive.

He may not have articulated those gloriously naive demands for freedom of expression (or the right to be self-indulgent and ill-disciplined) and freedom from rigid social mores (or the right to be irresponsible and louche) but he certainly walked the walk — more convincingly, you might argue, than most of his pop star peers who have, in the main, outlived him.

Even on the pitch this held true. As far as the football goes, my abiding memory is of the goal that wasn’t a goal at Windsor Park, Belfast.

Best scored for Northern Ireland against England and the goal was swiftly disallowed by an authoritarian idiot of a referee. I remember the moment perfectly. That decent yeoman of a goalkeeper Gordon Banks tossed the ball into the air ahead of a punt upfield and watched in epic bewilderment as Best intercepted it and flicked it up and over his head with impossible deftness, arrogance and unorthodoxy and then nodded it into the net.

The 1960s offered a clear social polarisation and one that, at the time, we assumed was between left and right, young and old. But it wasn’t; it was more fundamental. It was between those who admired authority and those who sought only to undermine it, regardless of the worthiness of the cause. Swearing, for example.

“I thought he was too good to be true,” Best once said of Charlton. “I was dying for him to say ‘f***’, just once.” And — as with the Windsor Park goal — half of the country nodded in agreement and the other half shook their heads sadly and clicked their tongues.

Best sulked and pouted under Charlton’s authority for two or three years, ending up throwing eggs at a poster of his captain in the local pub when he was meant to be taking part in Charlton’s testimonial match. All these years later, Charlton has no acrimony, merely admiration: he expresses regret, even remorse, that he hadn’t tried better to understand Best at the time. A hugely decent and thoughtful man — but still I know whose side I’m on.

This dichotomy has abounded in every branch of sport and the arts and even politics ever since. You were either for Alex Higgins, with his similarly wrecked liver, or you preferred Steve “Interesting” Davis. You either cheered the petulant, brilliant Ilie Nastase or Stan “Who?” Smith. Muhammad Ali or Henry Cooper. If you are on my side of the line, you affix your pennant to Botham rather than Boycott; Gascoigne and not Shearer; the Rolling Stones rather than the Beatles; Amis rather than Barnes; the Cavaliers not the Roundheads.

If you are with me, you also wish that there had been better reward for Charles James Fox and Alan Clark and Tam Dalyell and that one day there might indeed be a bigger stage for Boris Johnson. But, at the same time, you don’t hold your breath, because you accept that the things that make these people compelling are also deemed to be self-indulgences and probable evidence of a flawed character.

I would not wish to stretch this thesis too far but it does seem to me a fundamental division in the way we see the world. It is perhaps no more than an agreeable coincidence that the lad from my old junior school who was the most fervent fan of Bobby Charlton later became area youth organiser for the National Front. But the old demarcations of left versus right are rather less relevant today than they were at the time of the French revolution; in fact, insofar as it makes no difference, they have dissolved entirely.

In future the political debate will be fought between those with an authoritarian instinct, those who trust in and show deference to the state and to authority in general, and those of us who are to a greater or lesser extent feckless libertarians. In short, it is an argument between those of us who were for Charlton and those of us who were for Best. It’s a schism that does not recognise present party allegiances — Labour has as many libertarians as the Conservative party — and one that underlies most of the current political debates, be it the licensing laws and binge drinking or the move to remove habeas corpus for terror suspects.

In the mean time, let us give thanks for George Best and hope that he rests in a certain sort of happiness, if not necessarily peace; a dystopia full of alcohol, parties and nubile blonde women with fairly large breasts. And when the obituaries are written, please spare us the sententious caveats: that wonderful flamboyance on the pitch was indivisible from the recklessness off it. They are part of the same thing. You can never have one without the other. Some of us are more than happy to extend such licence — and indeed, a free liver on the NHS — to someone who both illuminated our lives and shook us up a bit. Others will always begrudge such indulgences. Which side are you on?

Me ? I doff my cap to the you, Sinatra would have been proud... you certainly did it your way.

And then the story taken from Sky Sports....

George is the greatest of all the great footballers. While all other players have their individual merits, George was the only 'complete' footballer - dribble, tackle, pass, shoot - the lot! Although I never got to see him play I have collected every piece of video footage I can get my hands on and wouldn't trade it for anything. This is a true story told by a journalist in 1976. In 1976, Northern Ireland were drawn against Holland in Rotterdam as one of their group qualifying matches for the World Cup. Back then the reporters stayed at the same hotel as the team and travelled with them on the coach to the game. As it happened I sat beside George on the way to the stadium that evening. Holland - midway between successive World Cup final appearances - and Johan Cruyff were at their peak at the time. George wasn't. I asked him what he thought of the acknowledged world number one and he said he thought the Dutchman was outstanding. 'Better than you?' I asked. George looked at me and laughed. 'You're kidding aren't you? I tell you what I'll do tonight... I'll nutmeg Cruyff first chance I get.' And we both laughed at the thought. A couple of hours later the Irish players were announced one by one on to the pitch. Pat Jennings, as goalkeeper, was first out of the tunnel to appreciative applause. Best, as No 11, was last. 'And now,' revved up the PA guy, 'Number 11, Georgie [long pause] Best.' And out trotted George. Above him, a beautiful blonde reached over with a single, long-stemmed red rose. Given his nature, his training and his peripheral vision there was no way he was going to miss her or the rose, so he stopped, trotted back, reached up to take the flower, kissed her hand and ran out on to the pitch waving his rose at the punters as the applause grew even louder. Five minutes into the game he received the ball wide on the left. Instead of heading towards goal he turned directly infield, weaved his way past at least three Dutchmen and found his way to Cruyff who was wide right. He took the ball to his opponent, dipped a shoulder twice and slipped it between Cruyff's feet. As he ran round to collect it and run on he raised his right fist into the air. Only a few of us in the press box knew what this bravado act really meant. Johan Cruyff the best in the world? Are you kidding?" There's only one best and that's Best.
Andrew Sims

 

[Billy boy]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4490480.stm


The final journey begins..

BB

 

[Guinness]

Re: Geordie Best the Legend

Check out some of the different articles here:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/best_of_times/

Absolutely incredible out pouring of grief and respect for a footballing genius... "Our Geordie" was more than just someone special on the football pitch, he lived the holywood lifestyle and changed the game in more ways than one...

Associated Press
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - Family, friends and more than 100,000 fans said a bittersweet goodbye Saturday to George Best, the mercurial Manchester United star who died after a long battle with liver disease.

Best, 59, received a state-style funeral inside Stormont Parliamentary Building, Northern Ireland's most impressive public space on a hill overlooking the city, in the biggest display of public mourning ever experienced in this British territory of 1.7 million.

Mourners, many too young to have seen Best in his 1960s heyday, lined the five-kilometre route from his family home in East Belfast. They applauded and tossed bouquets and soccer scarves into the path of the slow-moving hearse, which bore floral wreaths reading ''Legend,'' ''George'' and ''Dad.'' Police saluted the passing casket.

Former Manchester United teammates and ex-Northern Ireland players carried the coffin up Stormont's steps for a service televised live throughout Britain and Ireland. It featured ballads from Northern Ireland vocalists Brian Kennedy and Peter Corry, tearful poems from son Calum and tributes from closest friend Bobby McAlinden and former teammate Denis Law.

Law, who combined up front with Best and Bobby Charlton on the Manchester United team that won the Champions Cup - the year Best was crowned European Footballer of the Year - recalled how his friendship with Best blossomed once they both reached their 30s and frequently took trips together.

Law, 65, candidly recalled Best's lovably feckless failure to keep appointments or to show up sober. ''I can't count the number of times he let me down. He didn't turn up, or he did turn up - and wasn't on this planet,'' Law said from a podium overlooking the casket, which was draped in a green Northern Ireland soccer flag.

At the request of the Best family, 10 fans were picked at random from the crowd outside to join approximately 300 family members, friends and dignitaries packed to capacity in the Grand Hall of Stormont. England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson, Northern Ireland coach Lawrie Sanchez and Man United player Ole Gunnar Solkskjaer were among those in attendance. ''I have never been to a funeral like that before,'' Eriksson said. ''It was beautiful and George and his family got the respect he deserved. I shed a few tears myself.''

Also there were Northern Ireland's former world featherweight boxing champion, Barry McGuigan, and Belfast snooker ace Alex Higgins. As were rival political leaders - often sitting side by side - from the British Protestant and Irish Catholic factions of this long-divided community. ''Whatever our politics, whatever our religion, George Best has helped us find our common humanity,'' said Peter Hain, the British secretary of state for Northern Ireland.

Hain recalled marvelling at Best's seemingly effortless grace as he tore through the defence of his team, Chelsea, in the 1960s. ''Even though I was a (Chelsea) fan, a fanatic, you actually wanted to see him do it - you clapped him as he destroyed your team,'' he said.

Those outside on a typically chilly and wet Belfast winter's day followed the ceremony on three giant TV screens. Many mourners had travelled overnight from England and the Republic of Ireland. ''Since I was a knee-high little boy, I watched his life,'' said Stanley Neill, 45, a railway operator. Neill arrived about 9 p.m. local time Friday and was first inside.

Best, who died on Nov. 25 in a London hospital, joined Man United at 17 and became a phenomenon with pace, dribbling and guile that left defenders in his wake. But blessed also with matinee-idol looks and a hearty appetite for women and booze, Best walked away from the game in 1972 to run nightclubs, fashion shops and other ill-fated business ventures.

''I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars,'' he once said. ''The rest I just squandered.''

The fact that thousands gathered together from different backgrounds and payed their respects is just amazing... The people of Northern Ireland showed their true colours (not green, nor red, white and blue) on Saturday... George Best was not only the most exciting footballer the world has ever seen, but he was idolized by millions for his charm and charisma... A compasionate human being and true gentleman...

RIP Besty!

 

[Guinness]

Cracking pic

George Played!!!