MISERABLE, inept, stone-cold Stormont’s parliament building gazes over the heads of the people of Belfast. Lord Edward Carson, frozen in bronze, harangues them for ever. The forbidding mile-long Prince of Wales Avenue separates the people from those who would rule them. Everything about this place seems to sneer at the people below: “You’re just not good enough.”

But that was then, the days of Empire; this is now, the days of superstars, when only the people are good enough. And so, yesterday, George Best was sent to eternity via Stormont’s Great Hall. And the Not Good Enoughs came to stand in the wind and rain to see him off.

Diana’s was the most emotional funeral I have ever attended, the Pope’s the most awe-inspiring. But Best’s was the most strange, suffused as it was with the modern cult of stardom and the ancient tribal cults of Ulster.

Many red hands, symbols of the province and the old Protestant ascendancy, were draped on the steel barriers at Stormont. And many footballers’ wives, caked in makeup, swathed in furs, teetered on high heels up the perilously slippery steps to the Great Hall.

At 7.15am yesterday about 2,000 were queuing in the damp darkness at the main entrance in Upper Newtonards Road. It had been raining for days in Belfast and, though it seemed to have stopped, the air felt wet and the people in their anoraks and faded blue jeans looked soaked. About 20 had been there all night.

Coaches began to bring in the 300 guests. They had been held, as the ironic local officials gleefully told us, at “a secret location”. The officials liked saying this. They also liked saying over and over again: “This is not a state funeral, it’s a family occasion.” They were wasting their breath.

Car doors were opened by heavyweight security men who scanned us for signs of threat. Armed policemen sidled about.

Suddenly a little group of commoners was drawn out of the crowd. The Best family had asked for 10 people to be allowed inside. Dazed and wearing northern Irish or Manchester United scarves, they were photographed and interviewed.

“He was something good to come out of Northern Ireland,” says William Coey, 55, “at a time when a lot of bad stuff was coming out.”

The city below had now all but disappeared in rain and mist, but helicopters indicated the cortege was approaching.

The bonnet of the hearse was laden with scarves and hats thrown by the crowd. Along the route every advertisement in every bus stop had been replaced by pictures of Best in his No 7 shirt.

They clapped as the hearse passed. Everybody kept insisting this was a celebration, not a wake. The cars arrived at the steps, discharging the family — Dickie, the father, an absurdly small figure; Angie, the first wife, in furs; Calum, the son, sharply almost sinisterly suited. They looked oddly expensive and powerful. This was their day. But it wasn’t really, it was George’s.

As he said, both his wives may have slagged him off, but both kept his surname. All the real power was in the coffin.

Agonisingly slowly the coffin was carried up. We flocked back down the hill to watch the events inside on the three big screens strung out along the avenue. I watched in wonder. In truth, I had been watching in wonder ever since I had arrived in Belfast on Friday. I asked everybody if they had expected such a fuss over this man who played football like a god 30 years ago and then spent the rest of his life in flamboyant, absurd decline.

“George, you lived your life like a football match,” said a sign left at an impromptu shrine at the City Hall, “a game of two halves. The first half goals, flair, excitement; the second yellow cards, fouls and hurt.” It was left by the Cregagh boys’ club from the estate where Best grew up.

At the Red Devils pub on the Catholic Falls Road, 53-year-old Tommy Price from Stalybridge in Cheshire tells me he’s seen 3,000 United games in 27 countries.

“It’s a religion,” he says, fixing my eyes like the Ancient Mariner.

And Best? His face crumpled and the tears flow. “I loved him and I still love him.”

The service is a strange affair, mixing sobbing sentimentality, fierce religiosity and, from Denis Law, dignified, tear-stained good blokery.

“We would be on the phone for half an hour,” he recalled. “We didn’t talk. He cried at one end and I cried at the other end.”

Everybody from TV anchor Eamonn Holmes to old Best pal Bobby McAlinden said a little too much. Calum and sister Barbara McNarry both choked up.

Of course, this was not just a funeral, any more than Best was just a footballer. This is popular religion. “A legend” they keep calling him.

But what they really meant was a myth, a story of a titan who sinned, fell and was then, in death, redeemed.

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