Former soccer star George Best was being treated last night in a hospital intensive-care unit three years after a liver transplant. The condition of the 59-year-old former Manchester United and Northern Ireland star was said to be improving.
He was admitted to the private Cromwell Hospital, west London, on Saturday suffering from flu-like symptoms, but his condition deteriorated and he was moved to the intensive-care unit yesterday.
His doctor, Prof Roger Williams, said: "He is serious but improving, with the emphasis on improving. The infection has caused him to be severely ill, but he is certainly responding to treatment and we hope to move him out of intensive care in the next 24 hours." There was "no real cause for alarm".
Prof Williams said the immuno-suppressant drugs Best had been taking had made him more susceptible to infection. He was likely to spend at least a week in hospital after leaving intensive care.
Best was visited yesterday by his son Calum, who said: "He's okay, he's stabilising."
Prof Williams later said Best's kidneys were now "working again" after being affected by the infection.
"Overnight he had a lot of treatment and monitoring, and certainly all the signs would suggest that he is responding to that treatment," he told Sky News.
He said Best had come to see him at the end of last week thinking he had an infection.
"He'd been feeling poorly for a few days and that got very much worse on the Sunday, probably a chest infection or something like that."
The doctor said he did not want to talk about whether Best had been drinking again.
"We always try and get him to stop because we don't want him drinking, and he knows that too but it's something that's addictive to him."
However he added that Best had abstained for a year before his liver transplant "so he can do it".
Best, whose life has been blighted for years by alcohol abuse, underwent life-saving surgery in July 2002, but went on a drinking binge less than a year after the liver transplant.
In February last year he was banned from driving for 20 months and fined £1,500 after admitting to driving while almost 2½ times over the legal limit. In November last year he had a second operation to check his liver and afterwards declared himself healthy.
The memory of Best's soccer exploits - he helped Manchester United to the league title in 1965 and 1967 and the European Cup a year later - has been overshadowed by his private life.
He was granted a divorce from his wife Alex in April 2004, and in June he left the Forest Mere health farm in Hampshire, his home for the past two years.