IN RECENT weeks he has become one of the most familiar faces in medicine, but recognition has not always been easy for the man charged with keeping George Best alive. Professor Roger Williams, the eminent surgeon who brought his bedside manner to television cameras when the former Manchester United player’s condition deteriorated last month, said yesterday that he did not immediately react to the name of his new patient when Best was announced by the receptionist at his clinic five years ago.

Williams, the leading liver-disease consultant whose daily update from outside the Cromwell Hospital in West London has been required watching for all Best fans, has subsequently become a great admirer of the 1968 European Footballer of the Year.

“When he first came to see me with his second wife Alex, the receptionist came in and said to me, ‘I have got George Best waiting to see you,’ ” Williams said. “I replied, ‘Who’s George Best?’ Of course, I knew who he was but when you are in a consulting room, you don’t realise the link. The penny did not immediately drop. However, he has been a wonderful patient and has never complained even during the most difficult circumstances. He is such a nice man, always calling me Doc.”

Williams, who was the medical side of the team that in 1968 carried out the first successful liver transplant in Britain, has seen Best regularly since their first meeting, even appearing when the footballer was the subject on the television programme This is Your Life.

The present director of the Institute of Hepatology at University College, London University, Williams was delighted when Best addressed an early meeting of the Parliamentary All-Party Liver Group at Westminster. “He had not had a drink for ages and spoke to everyone about the problems of being addicted,” Williams said. “His only difficulty comes when too many people are feeding him drink.”

Williams, 74, who was appointed a CBE in 1993 and is the author of more than 2,000 scientific papers, largely on the liver, never saw Best play, having seen only film of the player at his peak in the 1960s and early 1970s. His favourite sport is tennis, which he plays at weekends with a professional at his home in Wiltshire.

Williams still enjoys competitive sailing, recently buying a new J92 boat, and is a member of the Royal Ocean Racing Club and the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. He was educated at St Mary’s College, Southampton, and then at the London Hospital Medical College. He has been married twice and has had eight children.

In recent months he has vociferously opposed the Government’s plans to extend the licensing laws, which came into effect last night. “Every doctor is against it,” Williams said yesterday. “Anyone who knows anything about drink knows that there will be more violence and more illness. And there is already so much.”

He says that there are cases of people getting cirrhosis when they in their thirties or earlier and is not convinced by the argument that by giving people longer to drink, people will spread their drinking over a longer period, describing such a view as “rubbish”.

He believes that the Government should have had a pilot study carried out to assess the impact and points to the growing number of people who have died from alcohol-related diseases in recent years, a figure that went up from 5,525 in 2000 to 6,525 last year. He fears that this trend will continue because of the new laws, although Best seems determined not to become one of the statistics.

Despite having to be put back on a ventilator after his condition worsened, the 59-year-old partly regained consciousness and was able to move his head and eyes yesterday. “He remains very ill,” Williams said, “but he is still very alert, very sedated, so I don’t think there is a very big change.”

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