Best and the worst of times

Simon Hoggart

Wednesday, 29th April 2009

Simon Hoggart looks back over recent television broadcasts

Best: His Mother’s Son (BBC 2, Sunday) was, for those of us from a certain place and time, almost unbearably poignant. Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris — such a charming soubriquet — was a defender with Chelsea in the 1960s. He tells the story of his manager, Tommy Docherty, briefing him before a match against Manchester United. ‘They’ve got this new player called Best. Apparently he’s good. I want you to take him out.’

Harris pointed out that if he was too rough, he might get himself sent off.

‘Put it this way, son,’ said Docherty. ‘They’ll miss him more than we’ll miss you.’

And it is still true today. We miss him more than any other footballer. Soccer is actually a fairly boring game, since the aim is to get the ball somewhere without using a logical way of doing it, whether with a bat, a racquet, or your hands. If you had a team of armless footballers they would actually be at an advantage, since they couldn’t be accused of handling. But George Best was different. In my youth in Manchester I often watched him play, and the sense I had was that he didn’t really pay much attention to the other side. Their players were too clumsy to inconvenience him, so he played a sort of private game with the football, like a boy taking a frisky puppy for a walk. I swear that at times he would run in front of the thing, and it would roll loyally back to his feet.

But the booze had already snared him. He sometimes drank at a pub in Manchester called the New Grapes, and he’d sometimes join with Guardian folk. He didn’t mind much who joined him. You’d think that half a dozen large rums were too many for a man who had a match the following day, but nobody was going to tell him, or fail to buy another for the most loved footballer in the world.

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