Well done for being brave enough to post what most of us are thinking! I too feel that unlike Richard Burns, Bests is hardly a tragic death but a selfish self inflicted one, and although I remeber as a kid looking up to him as a sporting legend, I also remember the stories of his abusive nature too.

missed your tome the few days nice to see you back and on form, hitting the nail on the head with your comments about George Best and I share your feelings about Richard Burns what a waste of a young life

i also have no real interest in football apart from knowing how my hometown team get on of a saturday (lose,mostly!) and am too young to have seen best play but watching the clips on tv recently its obvious that the man was a genius on the pitch.
what was also clear was that he was a pioneer for the superstar players of today,in a time when there didnt seem to be the checks and balances and protection against the pitfalls of such fame.
hopefully,the lessons learnt will not be wasted.that WOULD be a tragedy.

Nice to know that someone still has their head screwed on - well done for saying stuff that needs to be said, rather than getting caught up in hysteria.

-jdp

I don't care either way about the guy, don't know much about him.
However I would mourn the other people who died of drink on that day, and the ones who died of drugs and those who smoked themselves to death. Humans aren't infallible, there are lots of reasons people get into these situations, and I don't think they do it on purpose. We might all think that in their situation, we'd be stronger, we'd "just stop" but I don't think it would be so cut and dry in reality.

I tell you what I found really disturbing though, the big "countdown" to his death, with everyone impatiently waiting for him to finally go. It was really distasteful. On Friday morning everyone did their obituarys anyway, having lost patience waiting for him to die. It was a bit of a circus to be honest.

i agree with your comment about george best....tho i'd go a bit further. best only got his transplant cos he was famous and had the money. with people dying while waiting for organ transplants, i think it was very wrong that he should have had the transplant, as he had not even recovered from his alcoholism. and as the outcome has proved - even with the transplant his life was short, and he abused the donation by carrying on drinking. i know that it is very hard to given up an addiction, but were all protocols followed he should not have had the donation. besides, he might have had a better quality of life if he had not had the transplant, with all the immunesuppression and side effects that go with it.

Yep, well said and I hope the media can now get over their sycophantic and sickening sentimentality.

The death of Richard Burns is more upsetting and is a greater loss than that of a burnt out, selfish waster like Best.

Hmm, we must have similar thoughts. I posted today also. I think the press have gone way over the top with the almost blanket coverage.

Richard Burns got mentioned after the Rugby and Football on Sky News. I don't know what the BBC was like seeing as I try to avoid it these days.

People aren't grieving for the man he became, they are mourning the boy he was and the man he could have been. The older ones certainly remember the way it was at the height of his fame, when if you take the hysteria there is for David Beckham and magnify it by ten, that is what it was like for George Best. He was the embodiment of the dreams of every little boy who kicks a ball up against the garage wall. And every little girl who had just discovered boys were actually, quite nice...

What a lot of people are mourning, if you like, is the proof that nobody can have it all and survive it. The dream is dead.

Shame when anyone dies but why the fuss, famous for five years, but that was 30 years ago.
My first wife died aged 37 of alcohol related stuff, so I have mixed feelings. Couldn't kick the habit, even with help, hospital admissions and drugs. She became one of the 'regulars' for the ambulance service until a PE took her life. Sorry if this is a bit personal.
Sober, she was great. Teacher, ex-nurse, kind and generous etc. Maybe its genetic, nature or nuture, who really knows.
But to all the paramedics who treated her with kindness and professionalism - THANKS.

it is a sad fact of life ladies and gentlemen when england's only rallying world champion dies of a tragic illness ad a young age but is over shadowed by a man who had continued to waste his life away even though he was given a second chance at life. the media's reaction to this this ifeel is despicable since george best recives blanket coverage in to days papers and richard burns recieves a tiny little paragraph in the center of pg 8 (sunday mail sunday 27nov). a sorry state of affairs indeed

Totally agree.

Whilst I feel sorry for anyone with addiction problems, it strikes me as very tragic that in this case, Best was given a second opportunity in life with a transplant - via someone else's tragedy - and yet he wasted it.

Someone much more 'worthy' could have benefitted from his new liver I think.

A shame all round.

The Girl

Well said, I wanted to say something similar but you've done it better justice. I'm sickened by the comentary given to Best. Burns is one of the best talents the British has seen in a rally driver, he didn't waste his life and someone elses. What was said about Burns on the news yesterday? nothing.

Whilst we're on the subject of death, Pat Morita who played Mr Myagi in the Karate Kid films died on Thursday.

The world's ugliest dog died too.
News article
:(

Again, good for you for saying what we were all thinking. Even got too much of George Best here on BBC World.

Hero worship is weird. Best seems like a sort-of harmless example, although you're right that putting abuse and (potential) vehicular homicide in with "greatness" isn't a Good Thing. The strength of the need for hero worship really hit me during the US reaction to 9/11/2001. Sept 10th the Shrub was an obvious incompetent with plummeting popularity. Sept 11th and 12th he was flying around on Air Force One and hiding in bunkers, but by the 13th, or 14th at the latest, he was the Brave Dear Leader who was going to save the country by whupping somebody's ass. Very, very weird.

That set me to wondering whether hero worship is some kind of genetic taint humans simply have, which there's no point fighting. The best outcome may be to channel it to something reasonably limited and harmless. And that was when I started thinking that maybe cermonial monarchies actually perform a very useful function (although maintaining the stratospheric standards of behavior suitable for heroes is obviously pretty hard on the poor blighters).

i'm glad one person mentioned Pat Morita......so now it's two!!... good on you Mr Miyagi for the memories you've given us big kids....... Wax off!.

I'm disappointed with a lot of the comments I've read on this board today. George Best was a convicted drink driver and spent time in jail for it. How many people on this board have driven a motor vehicle over the speed limit and fobbed it off with a lame excuse "Well it was 3am and there was no one on the road." George Best paid his dues to society - have you?

He was also an alcoholic, which most doctors and people in the recognise as an illness. But he didn't die from it. The BBC, usually a respected and balanced source of the news have been qouted as saying

"[George Best's] condition deteriorated sharply last Friday with the development of a lung infection that led to internal bleeding.

"He... was particularly susceptible to infection because of medicines he needed after his liver transplant."

He didn't drink his transplanted liver away he died from an infection.

Charges of assault of were never pressed which which would make Reynolds comments of "slapping people around" libelase and should be retracted with an apology.

But to get to my point - what fans of football are lamenting is the beauty of Best playing football; in the same way that art fans would find Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel beautiful. We had never seen a footballer like Best and we've not since.

Comparing his media coverage to Richard Burns' is futile. Best had no control over the fact the media loved to print a story about him, in the same way that Richard Burns had little control over the fact that they didn't.

I don't like coming onto places like this and having to make a stand. George Best in my eyes was a flawed genious, a generous guy that gave too much of himself.

Best didn't kill anyone but maybe himself and we all have to die. But he did give millions of people happiness. I hope your friends are as kind to you when you die and don't say things like "He was a miserable bastard that liked to slag people off on interent chat boards!" That would be a waste.

Martyn

Actually he was convicted in 1984 for drink-driving and assaulting apolice officer, so, no it isn't libelous. (Also from the BBC).

But yes you are right that I should have put him in with the 40,000+ deaths that are related to drinking, rather than directly attributable.

And anyway, the point of my post is less about George Best, and more about the utter foolishness of attributing near sainthood, on someone not deserving of it. Unless of course your criteria for sainthood is tied to how well they kick a football about.

And, if alcoholism is an illness...

...maybe a topic for another post.

he got a liver transplant and then swiftly went back on the booze, hence he drank his new liver away, wasted that chance.

Thirty years ago he kicked good football, that doesn't make him fantastic and it doesn't excuse the hell he'd have put his family through by *not fighting hard enough* against his illness of alcoholism.

His family were his main victims, as they are of any alcoholic. Dealing with the debt he ran up, dealing with his behaviour, dealing with whatever things he may have said or done behind closed doors, and always constantly dealing with knowing that as far as he was concerned, the booze came first.

Kicking a football thirty years ago doesn't excuse that.

While I agree that Bestie did squander his life away, and that it was very wrong for him to recieve a second liver when he was not even recovered, most of the comments here, I would assume, are by people who have either never seen him play and do not know how utterly breath taking his skills were. He was an alcoholic, a flawed genius, but he does not deserve such condemnation. He brought so much happiness to so many people and I, and many other people, choose to celebrate his ability to perform miracles and perfections on the pitch rather than his flaws and his shortcomings.

It's a fair point that a George Best assaulted a police officer - you have me there. But you stated that Best "slapped people around". People, last time I checked, means more than one person. Until you can state another person that Best was convicted of assaulting your point is still libelous. It may be a mute point to most of Random Acts readership, but the Law has been argued over smaller details.

I think there are very few people describing Best as a saint. Flawed genius, great footballer, drunk, waster - all of the above. I don't know of anyone knocking on the doors to the Vatican at the moment.

I'd agree with most of your readers comments. It was a waste of a Life and I would have liked Best to have respected it more. I wanted to see him play into the twilight of his career with the vigour he showed at the start; and I would have like him to die peacefully in his old age. It didn't happen and life is crappy like that. What hurts is that this is a readership that, and I may be wrong, is taking an interest in our profession (I am a tech) because I imagine they have an interests in the work we do caring for people who call us sometimes at their lowest ebb. To hear people saying that anyone, regardless of who they are, doesn't deserve to have everything done to help them and reading between the lines - deserves to die, makes me wander about the decency of humanity, and certainly the decency of the readership.

I went to a girl today who had overdosed on paracetamol. This will do the same thing to your liver in a few days that George Best did in a life time to his through drink. I don't think there are any of you out there that would have the balls to tell this girl the same things, with the same rancor that you write about George Best. They have the same problem - they are two people struggling to get to grips with Life.

Martyn

Sorry if my first post on this excellent blog makes me sound like a pedant, but having studied media law, I know that it is not possible to libel a dead person. Their estate has no recourse in law against comments made that, were the person alive, would be considered libellous.

This whole discussion reminds me of when Princess Diana passed away at the same time as Mother Theresa- hysterical coverage of why one should be immeadiately beautified, and small footnotes on the death of Mother Theresa.


*time for a nice cup of tea and a sit down*

There isn't really much difference between the girl with the Paracetamol OD and George Best's drinking habits/addiction - one just tried to end her life quickly and George just did it publicly and over a much longer period of time. Both very tragic cases. Best was also taken in for assaulting his wife Alex. It isn't libelous to say he was a wife-beater and alcoholic - it was common knowledge and a reported fact also validated by his own admission. No-one deserves to die and in fact George Best has probably been dying for years. Some relatives of the girl are probably just as hurt, angry and upset as are George's relatives - any premature or futile death is a waste and most of the time that's what makes the ones left behind angry and hurt. In saying that, it kind of pissed me off that the media paid so much attention to Best's passing - finally speaking about him in the past before he actually died. Alcoholism or associated complications of alcoholism is fairly un-dignified at the best of times let alone having it paraded and analysed for all to see at a time when you should be left alone in peace to go.

I agree with you that the level of media attention is excessive, and that GBs death is no more tragic than anyone who is loved and dies leaving their friends and family behind.

However, alcoholism is now widely recognised as a disease, and is seriously addictive, so yes, I feel pity for someone who dies as a result of this insidious substance, just as I would for someone who is addicted to nicotine and dies of lung cancer.
I don't think that people voluntarily choose alcoholism, or to die of any of the number of slow and painful alcohol related illnesses. I'm not trying to excuse the despicable behaviour you mention such as drink driving and slapping people around, rather I see them as awful side effects of the addiction.

My brother-in-law died from alcohol related illness at 32 years of age, leaving behind my sister and their two children. He was an addict of the most desperate kind, and no treatment ever succeeded at breaking his fatal habit.

Alcoholism is like any disease - you can either go "oh, poor me, it's not my fault I'm being antisocial, it's just because I'm in so much pain/so depressed/whatever" or you can fight it.

I have the greatest respect for those who fight it. Those who fall over but then stand up again, make *apologies* rather than excuses and blaming it on the illness, those who try and try and try every day of their lives no matter how difficult it is...

The ones I don't have much respect at all for are the ones who don't try. Who say things like "it's just because it's Christmas" or "so-and-so was winding me up" or "I can't do it, it's too difficult", the ones who don't go to the support groups, don't use the help that's available, and trample all over the feelings of the people who care.

So how much drink per day does it take to really cause that much harm on the body? I take down about 3 to 4 pints a night with friends at the pub, is this amount something to worry about?
Thanks

I was discussing this with my boss, we are both of the same opinion that he did do it to himself. I have a 17 year old family friend who has a brain tumour, who is now back in hospital after a stroke. The family is fully prepared for her not making it to Christmas. I know who I’ll be grieving for.

I think for me, the media attention has been most sickening - even before he died the almost obsessive behaviour of the press was apparent. I think if the BBC news website headline had been "George Best not quite dead yet" I wouldn't have been surprised. I wrote a short piece about vultures, but was too chicken to publish it on my blog..

Since he died, the nation seems to have gone into 'mourning mode' - and they want to be seen to be mourning. (for example - people are paying £40+ for a Man U shirt to write a condolance message on and display it outside Old Trafford - why not donate that £40 to someone like the British Liver Trust?) I dunno - I get the same feeling as I did after July 7th - people just want to be a part of the grief.

And yes, I totally agree with everything you've said, Tom.

I made most of the same points that you have, Tom, on my blog at the week-end, although probably not so eloquently.

As someone working with newborn/premature babies damaged through parental drink and drugs, who saw the damage to patients and their families when working in General Nursing, who has friends scarred mentally through what they went through as children of alcoholics, THANK YOU for saying what needed to be said, for not glorifieing a drunk who could once 'kick a ball about a bit'.
I'm sick of people making excuses for drunks and druggies, OK its an illness, but it didnt start with the first drink - they should take the responsibility for what they have done TO THEMSELVES.

the only football match i have ever been to was in about 1979. his last match for hibs, in edinburgh. he was magical.

still, wonder who would of benefitted from the liver.

The comments made by Jennie are typical of the comments that annoy and sadden me. I'm sorry for your friend with the brain tumour, but I'm not asking you to grieve for Best, no one is. Just stop writing back handed things about him. And for all the people that are sick of the amont of inches Best gets in the media - why don't you stop writing too? I think there are too many people here that like the sound of their own voice (or the look of their text).

Again to reiterate. No one wants your sympathy. George Best was human like you and I and he dealt with his problems as well as he could. No one had ever experienced what he'd been through, the adulation, the media attention and the pitfalls that went with it. No one knew how to protect him like the Rooneys and Beckhams today.

George Best gave joy to millions of people. I think good of his life far outweighs the bad. And when you listen to the people that knew him, or the people that met him they all speak fondly. That's good enough for me to know that poisened penned of you out there are wrong.

Martyn

I agree with you Martyn. He was a footballing genius. Maybe the folk who do not understand the fuss about him now are too young to understand the impact he had while he was playing.

yes, some of us are too young, you know why? Because his "genius" and "impact" - which was limited to kicking a ball around, just what mankind needs - was for a few brief years half a lifetime ago. The latter half of his lifetime, he was a selfish wastrel, and I do not for the life of me understand why we are being encouraged to mourn his death.

That's right. When you listen to the edit for radio/television of what the friends and relatives that the George Best Tribute Programme researchers have chosen to interview have said in front of the cameras, all the while mindful of their own reputations and what their own still-alive family and friends might think, then yes, I would imagine that you get fond recollections of the good times.

The reason we are writing is because we don't like the bias of the media. Best was not a monster, but he was hardly any kind of hero, working selflessly to improve other people's lives, helping the helpless, supporting the needy, using his fortune for good causes - he just kicked a ball about for a few years, lived a selfish high-life off the proceeds, and drank himself into debt and hospital.

Sad, yes. National mourning and monuments? A bit ridiculous.

By the way, this article was quoted on page 2 of Monday's Guardian, but they attributed it to theobvious.

Batsgirl,

Did you hear that they are proposing to build a new stadium in N.Ireland and name it after Best. I for one will be happy to go there. A fitting tribute to a great footballer.

George Best in his own way did help many people. Joy to millions watching him play, and the thousands of jobs he created through the media circus that surrounded him. So in his own little way he did work selflesessly to improve the lives of those around him.

Martyn

I never met the man, but I can't help thinking he kicked the football and drank the champagne and slept with the women and so on and so forth either because he wanted to, or in the case of the football and public appearances because he was also being paid to.

When he assaulted the police officer, or drove drunk, or otherwise behaved like a prat, as mentioned above in the comments, I very much doubt he was thinking "how nice I'm being, this will create income for journalists and police officers and court officials".

I'd also be prepared to hazard a guess that any addictions counsellors he saw - and therefore "created a job for" - would have been happier for him if he'd not become a high-profile addict, glorifying a destructive path.

You may wish to look up the definition of "selfless".

Selfless: Having, exhibiting, or motivated by no concern for oneself.

I couldn't think of a sentence that describes George Best better.

Thanks batsgirl.

Martyn

while I agree with the definition, I have trouble with your application.

He certainly had no concern for himself in terms of his long term health, however he also had little regard for others as was proved by his antics such as drunk-driving.

You missed the rest of the definition from dictionary.com: showing unselfish concern for the welfare of others.

However you are successfully proving that reason will not get past the rose-tinted glasses of hero-worship, so I hope you enjoy your pilgrimage to the football ground named after your idol and follow in his footsteps at every opportunity. Possibly you will even learn the function of the reply button.

Batsgirl,

Contrary to your thoughts I've paid all my respects to George Best by having a minutes silence at football on Saturday. My chief concern was always righting a few wrongs and putting the other side of the argument with all the Geoge Best bashing that was going on.

My definition of selfless was a bit of a wind up, but I never got personal. I don't really see the big deal of a reply button so long as my comment follows the one I am replying to.

I've always recognised Best's faults, but his good points also. If that makes me wrong to see the good in people then I'll have to just carry on living that way and making mistakes. As my Dad always said "I married your Mum for her faults - anyone could love her qualities.".

I've enjoyed sparring with you Batsgirl - maybe we can do this again on more neutral territory.

So long.

Martyn