The booming speakers for the three giant screens went silent. Under the cackle of the helicopter blades, scattered conversations fell to a whisper. In that moment it was almost like a funeral.

Looking down from Carson’s statue, George Best’s cortege seemed to be scarcely moving. Applause beat the cars up the mile-long avenue, a wave of sound transmitted by lines of well-wishers.

The funeral cars bore their cargo of wreaths, and scarves and flowers thrown from the side as they passed. It was a final embrace from a public that had supported him through all the years.

Those that came were here to celebrate. Books and films have been made from the implausible script of Best’s life, but along the Prince of Wales Avenue was a huge amount of oral history, there for the asking. People who had never met him could tell you the moment that Best entered their lives.

At the barricades, three of his childhood friends huddled under umbrellas. Fay Gogarty was born in September 1946, four months after George.

She fancied him, but couldn’t make him see that there was more to life than football. Not then.

“Oh, I loved him so I did,” she said. “There was me and Pat Brown and Bell McKeon, God rest her soul. We were a gang, about 14 years old at the time. George was so shy as a boy. He always liked his football more than he liked the girls. We’d say, ‘George, are you going to walk us home?’ He’d say, ‘Aye sure,’ but you’d always be standing there waiting and he never did in the end.”

Simon Smith and five of his friends travelled from Manchester on Thursday. They were on a pilgrimage for the first time in their lives. When they arrived in Belfast they went straight to the Best family home on Burren Way and the worship continued all over town.

“We wanted to go to the United supporters’ club on the Falls Road and soak it up,” said Smith. “We wanted to say, ‘We’re from Manchester — what about it? We don’t care about your Troubles, we’re just here for George’.”

Smith was hooked 35 years ago — the day Best scored directly from a corner at Old Trafford.

“They said it was a fluke until he tried it against Sheffield United and he hit the post.”

In the Northern Ireland supporters’ club on Friday they met Alex Higgins and supped a while in his company. They thought he looked tired. A car was coming to pick him up at 7am for the funeral. That would be early enough for Alex, the lads thought.

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