Alcoholism has cursed Best's life

George Best was 16 years old when he first got drunk. He was on a team visit to Switzerland, and on a night out with his team-mates he had drunk the grand total of three pints of lager. By the time he got back to the hotel he was roaring drunk.

After that he never looked back. The lager was replaced with vodka and lemonade, then champagne and wine (he was particularly fond of Chateauneufdu-Pape), but what never changed was his prodigious thirst.

When he was young and fit Best was able to carry it off, drinking until the small hours the night before a match and then, after the final whistle, carrying on where he had left off. However drunk he had been, it never seemed to affect his performance - or, indeed, his legendary ability to pick up women. But once he stopped training properly the alcohol began to take a visible toll on his body.

Best is sober now, thanks to a combination of the persuasive powers of his wife Alex, his consultant Prof Roger Williams and Antabuse tablets. If he takes so much as a sip of alcohol, he will be sick. This year he celebrated his 56th birthday with a banana and honey milkshake.

Best may not be drinking these days, but the decades of abuse have wreaked terrible damage - both on his body and his personal life. When he was admitted to hospital after collapsing in agony, the doctors found that all those years of boozing had destroyed 80 per cent of his liver.

The drink - along with the womanising - also played its part in destroying his first marriage. Angie Best recalled in her autobiography her less-than-romantic wedding night in 1978. After a ceremony in Las Vegas the couple flew to Los Angeles where Best announced he had arranged to meet friends at the pub. "Don't wait up," he told his astonished bride. He returned drunk at 4am, his wife asleep.

Best's life was on a downward slide by then. Playing for a succession of fourthrate teams, he signed up with the San Jose Earthquakes, only to go on a sevenday bender and miss a press conference held to announce his arrival.

When the San Jose Earthquakes' bosses came round to persuade him to go into in-patient rehab, he slipped out into the kitchen and ran away.

He first went to see a doctor about his drinking in 1980. He was given anti-alcohol pills, but stuck them in a gap between his teeth instead of swallowing them. "It was like dealing with a child," recalled Angie. Anti- alcohol pellets were implanted in his stomach: a second operation went wrong, leaving him in agony with an infected stomach.

His numerous attempts to give up drinking reached a climax in March 2000, when he was existing on a diet of wine with brandy chasers. One day he collapsed in agony. "I really thought he was going to die," said his second wife Alex. He was taken to hospital, but after an injection to relieve the pain he discharged himself.

"I don't want to be a widow when I'm 28," she said. "Find somewhere, and I'll go in," he said. Best spent six weeks in hospital and four on the wagon, then went on the binge after a row with Alex.

Then, in February last year, after a wet and windy walk along the beach with his dog, he contracted chronic pneumonia. He came out of hospital, had another binge, and then finally took the momentous decision to have Antabuse tablets permanently implanted in his stomach.

Best, an intelligent man, if flawed, is well aware of the danger of going back on the bottle once he gets his new liver. "I want to go on having the Antabuse even when I have my new liver," he said.

"The professor says if I drink again he'll leave the country. I'm not about to let him down."