Bests are back together

George Best and his wife Alex arrived back in Britain yesterday after a holiday aimed at saving their marriage.

Only two weeks after Mrs Best publicly ended their relationship, she relented when she heard her alcoholic husband had undergone surgery to stop him drinking again.

Asked as they flew into Stansted from the South of France whether they had resolved their differences, an irritable-looking Best would only say: 'Well, we're here, aren't we?'

The reconciliation signals a spectacular climbdown by Mrs Best, 31, who had said when she announced the split: 'I have tried to be there for him during his recent well-catalogued problems but the situation is now that it is not right for us to be together at this time.

'I have always supported George and always will but for the present we will be living separate lives.'

But as on so many other occasions, she is understood to have forgiven her 57-year-old husband after learning that he had attended the Cromwell Hospital in West London to have implants placed in his stomach to help prevent him drinking.

It is also a dramatic turnaround by Best, who claimed to have consulted solicitors about beginning divorce proceedings. The former Manchester United star has been attending Champney's health resort in Forest Mere, Hampshire, in an attempt to dry out after repeatedly falling off the wagon in recent months.

His drinking binges have turned their marriage into something of a soap opera, with each recently claiming infidelity and unreasonable behaviour by the other.

Best began drinking once again earlier this year. Less than eight months earlier, he had vowed never to touch a drop of alcohol again after undergoing a ten-hour liver transplant.

Events came to a head when a furious Mrs Best returned home from a holiday in Malta, leaving her husband drinking heavily and cutting a pathetic figure by the pool on his own.

He was then rumoured to be having affairs with at least two women, and he claimed that he was 'bored' with marriage.