THERE IS A PECULIAR PHENOMENON among my circle of male friends that requires a lengthy explanation whenever a few of us gather together with any outsiders. I’m pretty sure it’s not a unique situation, but it is rather remarkable in its uniform use and blanket thoroughness. What it is, is that none of us call each other by our given names. Now, before you recoil in revulsion at the prospect of a looming list of larky, laddish pseudonyms, I can promise you that what actually makes these substitutions so notable is that none of them are, on the surface at least, in any way wacky or garish, nor are they ever used with a bellow and accompanying nudge in the ribs.
They are simply what we call each other as a matter of course, in much the same way that Brazilian footballers acquire obscure alternative handles (which is not the point of the piece here, by the way). For example, there’s John, who is known as Reg. This is purely because when we were all about 11 there was a record in the charts called Johnny Reggae and, around our estate, it was quite common for people to pronounce “reggae” with the gs soft, as in “ginger”. Thus Reg.
Then there’s Steve, who is known as Sebast. This one is slightly more twee in that Steve’s full name is Stephen Saunders and, at the age of about 5, his nursery school teacher, noting his initials were SS, called him Sebastian Sausage. Everyone laughed and Stephen started crying.
We’ve another Steve called Stan, two Pauls called Felix and Vince, a Terry called Kirk and, if you must know, I, like Oscar Wilde’s Earnest, am known as Jack. There are others, but I think you’ve suffered enough.
However, I must tell you about Mickey. Mickey had such a spectacularly bad 90 minutes for our under-13 side one Sunday morning in 1968 that he was instantly and permanently dubbed George. As in George Best. “I think we might have got a draw out of that if it hadn’t have been for George Best over here,” Felix (Paul No 1) said as we trudged off and, even though it only got a bitter chuckle at the time, that was the end of the kid we knew as Mickey.
Now, while the origins of all our other nom de plumes are simply silly or tenuous, George’s — that is to say Mickey’s — still carries some stigma. Imagine the burden. “Why do all your friends call you George, Mick?” every new acquaintance must inevitably ask. “Well,” he has to reply with drooping shoulders, “it’s because I missed an open goal from four yards against Dockhead Juniors in 1968.” In short, he still has to tell people: “I am the polar opposite of the greatest footballer of all time.”
I think he probably was the greatest. The real George Best, that is. He’s reported to have said that it was as a great footballer he’d most like to be remembered, but in this he was selling himself short. The stamp of George Best went way beyond football; he changed things like few other sportsmen can ever claim. Long before pop culture was properly identified, never mind nationally embraced, Best was forging it into the minds of a generation. I am well aware that it is wrong and poor form to pay tribute to somebody else’s life by solely reflecting on how it impacted on your own, but with George Best it simply cannot be all about his personal Rise And Fall.
In the many tributes to his life, the phrase “fifth Beatle” is glibly sloshed about amid passing references to swinging London, but insufficient weight is being given to that aspect of George’s impact on Britain.
To me, as an impatient 11-year-old, torn between the new long-haired rock and the more traditional passion for football, George Best seemed to be the only person who knew what was going on in the world. I mean, consider the 1966 England World Cup-winning squad. I knew even then that, glorious though their triumph was, it was apart from what other modern young men were discovering at the time, that there were two roads opening up for youth and they were unlikely ever to merge again.
I looked at my elder brother’s LPs and magazines, then looked at Nobby, Gordon and Ray and could sense that, even at the moment of its greatest triumph, my beloved football would not be coming along on the seismic tide of change about to divide the world. There was Jackie Charlton and there was Jimi Hendrix and soon a boy would just have to choose. Till along came George. Sure, he’d been noted during his first few years at Manchester United, but it was after the World Cup that the hair started getting longer, the stubble more defiant, the paisley shirts more radical. He was different — so, so different — and it panicked people.
There was hardly a comedian of the times who didn’t have his George Best “he’s a queer one” routine. I know both are equally revered icons now, but I can recall how most of the country wondered why Best couldn’t be more like that nice, smart, normal Bobby Moore. Best, the thinking ran, looked like he needed a good bath and a spell in the Army. I hated that. To me, Bobby Moore looked like a footballer. Which was fine. But George Best looked like the future. I can recall the immense pleasure I got when once a school teacher of mine remarked on my lengthening hair — probably a quarter of an inch over the ear — by saying: “Oh look, lads, we’ve got George Best with us today . . .”
Not John Lennon or Mick Jagger. George Best. See, Lennon and Jagger could be explained away as belonging to the rarefied pop world of weirdos. But George was an irritant, an infiltrator, his individuality coupled with his genius a constant reminder to the mainstream that the changes that were coming could not be kept at bay for ever. Even as late as 1972, terraces the nation over resounded to the song “Georgie Best, Superstar, Looks Like A Woman And He Wears A Bra!” Oh yes, kids, today’s on-field hairbands and braids were won through the blood of a martyr. Speaking of which . . .
I had a pair of his boots in 1971 — the Stylo “George Best”. These were shockingly radical in that they were all black with a single white stripe along the upper instep and, further announcing the revolution, they laced up along the side! Under a flap! True, they were almost impossible to tie in a way that could match the sleek image on the box. All I could see was how breathtakingly cool they were going to make me look as I stood up front, hands on hips, waiting for a through-ball that would send me effortlessly around the keeper.
Which is why, when I tried them on Christmas Day 1971, I refused to admit they were too small for me. “Are you sure they’re OK?” my Mum kept asking, pressing her thumb on to the enormous Mount St Helens-style bulge my big toe was creating at the far end. I maintained that they were. The truth was that they felt like two bean cans filled with broken glass, but I simply couldn’t wait to make every other kid in Southwark Park keel over with jealousy. Besides, all new boots need “breaking in”.
Well, over the upcoming months, those boots broke me and to this day I still have two toes that loop around each other like a cough candy. “Those sodding boots,” Mum would say as she gingerly removed my crispy socks from the kit bag and saw the heels coated in blood. “You’ll be crippled! Why didn’t you let me change them when we had the chance? If I ever see that George Best I’ll chuck ’em at him! ” Well, she never met him, but I’m enormously proud to say that I did.
Actually had a kick around with him, too, in Chris Evans’s substantial back garden in 1999 while filming an interview for the TFI Friday TV show. We played three-a-side and, gather round grandchildren, at one point I sold him a dummy and left him standing stone still in the long grass. True, he was barefoot and holding a pint of white wine and soda at the time, but I’m sure I heard him gasp as I thudded past in my cowboy boots. I strode on a couple of more paces before putting my foot on the ball and screeching: “I just beat George Best! I just beat George Best!” George broke out in a wheezy laugh and, sweeping his hair back, chuckled: “Well, let’s say you pushed past what’s left of him!” His end last Friday was as vile and squalid as his talent had been uplifting and perfect.
People under 40 may think all the emotional newsprint splashed upon him is yet the latest romancing of an old warhorse from the good old days who, by Jiminy, could teach these young upstarts a thing or two.
Well, of course, that’s exactly what he did. Rebellious, shocking and modern George Best’s talent forced football to accommodate the new and injected life and vigour into a staid, stalled system.
If you really want to measure the legacy of the extraordinary, magnificent, doomed Belfast boy, the next time you’re at a Premiership fixture, as they say, just look around you.
E-MAIL: dannyanddanny@hotmail.com
