Sailing on a sea of tranquility

The comfy bench seat in the corner of the Phene Arms in Chelsea was empty again yesterday, as it has been for three days since its famous regular occupant was admitted to hospital. It is the seat where a tracksuited George Best can be found most days, sometimes from opening time, sipping white wine on the rocks, glasses perched on the end of his nose as he begins his daily tussle with a newspaper crossword.

Out of deference to his celebrity status and his crocked, former footballer's knee, Bestie receives table service from the bar staff. This also allows him to stay in his seat with his back pressed firmly against the wall, a position he has always occupied since the day a few years ago when a passing nutter smashed a pint pot into the back of his head.

Best will retell the details of the blood seeping down his face as matter of factly as if he were describing a mundane daily chore such as walking to the local newsagents. But then events that would take on nightmarish proportions for us seem commonplace in the life of Best, a 53-year-old still getting into a 20-year-old's scrapes.

Best, who was admitted to the Cromwell Hospital on Wednesday with stomach pains, spent yesterday sitting up in bed doing the familiar crossword while surreally reading his obituary notices.

He will have been irritated and bemused that most of this premature prose, penned after false reports that he was fighting for his life on Thursday night, were echoes of the famous line "Where did it all go wrong, George?" attributed to a hotel waiter delivering champagne to the room he was sharing with one of his Miss Worlds.

It is, he complains, how people always see him: poor, tragic George, who threw away not only a football career but his life, and who is forced to trade on his notoriety as a famous drunk to make a living. He feels fulfilled with his renewed life as a full-time celebrity.

Some people are astonished to hear the details of Best's comfortable lifestyle, apparently believing that he has been living in a cardboard box under Waterloo Bridge. He has had his share of Waterloos: the premature ending of his football career; the descent into alcohol abuse that cost him his first marriage and led to him being imprisoned in 1984 for assaulting a policeman; most recently the loss of his flat to his former agent Murdo McLeod.

But life goes on its erratic, eventful way for Best and, no matter how chaotic it looks to outsiders, he and his second wife Alex (27), who call each other Bestie, see themselves as sailing on a sea of tranquillity. Booze may have put him back in hospital with suspected liver damage but he has cleaned up his act considerably in recent years, helped by Alex and his agent and close friend Phil Hughes. And two or three times a year he books himself into Henlow Grange health farm.

Where he once had a reputation for 100 per cent unreliability, he is now able to stay sober long enough to perform lucrative engagements on the after-dinner circuit and in advertising campaigns as well as holding down a regular spot as a football pundit on Sky TV on Saturday afternoons. He also has a share in his local Italian restaurant, where they serve wine under his own label.

He has been so successful on the after-dinner circuit, sometimes selling out 400-seat venues two nights in a row, that he has been able to replace the lost flat with another, more splendid one in Cheyne Walk, one of London's most prestigious addresses. Recently he spent a week in Japan at the expense of a sports shop owner who decided that his presence would be a boost to sales at the store. Best, fearing the worst when the stomach pains began, went on the wagon 12 days ago and his agent said yesterday that he had vowed to stop drinking.

Regulars in the Phene, however, do not expect it will be long after his release from hospital that Bestie will be back in his familiar corner seat.