The great George Best once predicted “they’ll forget the rubbish when I’ve gone and remember the football”. Thankfully, says Nick Timothy in The Critic, he was dead wrong. Best the off-pitch gambler and boozehound is far more legendary than Best the mercurial winger. He was unpredictable and rarely turned up to training, instead choosing to see a string of supermodel girlfriends. “I used to go missing a lot,” he later quipped. “Miss Canada, Miss United Kingdom, Miss World.”
Some fans weren’t so charmed by his off-pitch antics. One night, after a successful gambling session at a hotel casino, the washed-up Manchester United veteran stumbled back to his room with his girlfriend – a former Miss World – and ordered champagne. When the waiter arrived, “he found Best lying in bed, surrounded by bank notes and with the former Miss World half-naked in his arms”. “George,” said the waiter, “where did it all go wrong?”