Dickie Best stood in the half-light in the middle of his front room. To the air he lifted an envelope. "This arrived this morning," he said. The letter had a German stamp and postmark. On it was written: "George Best, Footballer, Belfast." Dickie gets them all the time.
That was four years ago. At that point, George Best was 50. He had not played football professionally for 12 years. He had not played international football for two decades. He had not played for Manchester United since he was 27.
If that latter date - December 1972 - can be described fairly as the end of George Best's important football period - America, Fulham, Hibs, Cork, Stockport were tawdry affairs by comparison and he never again played European football - then that meant Best was still receiving autograph requests from German strangers 23 years after his last significant contribution to the continent's football consciousness.
Standing in Dickie Best's flat-roofed terraced council house in Burren Way on the Cregagh estate, the sprawling 1940s housing scheme in east Belfast where George Best grew up and where Dickie Best still lives, 51 years after he moved there with his wife Ann, it did indeed seem odd that the fan mail was still coming here 35 years after George left home. If anyone ever doubted Best's enduring appeal throughout the years and the turmoil, then a visit to Burren Way would alter their thinking. Dickie popped upstairs and returned with a signed photograph of his son. "I get him to do a few each time he comes home."
This has been Dickie Best's life for almost 40 years, a stormy voyage around his son. It has become his normality. Adulation, disdain, drink, wonder, pain - Dickie has been kissed by them all, because of his exceptional first-born. He recognises the incongruity, yet he also understands the passion that inspires Teutonic adoration all these years on.
It is the same fascination with George that keeps him on the front pages today, which saw BBC 2 clear an evening's programming to celebrate his 50th birthday and which sees him "honoured" in Belfast on Monday. A tribute day has been organised, culminating in the world premiere of the latest attempt to capture the beautiful chaos of Best's life on celluloid, a film entitled Best.
It is, allegedly, dreadful, and George was said to have left a private screening embarrassed by the invention and misinterpretation. He appears in the film at the end with his wife Alex, but this will be more to do with money than art or truth. There are other events planned, such as a celebrity kickabout. It seems well-intentioned. It also seems like a flimsy way to salute a hero. The man himself has decided not to attend.
There is a debate in Belfast, centred on tourism, about the renaming of streets to reflect those from the city who "made it" elsewhere. The argument is that if Cornmarket was changed to Van Morrison Plaza more visitors would come. It is a bit late for a place like Belfast to be trying to rewrite history. There is a reason why it is called Cornmarket.
Streets do not need to be re-named. Travel from Liverpool, through Manchester and Leeds to Newcastle, and the heroes of northern England's football heartland are commemorated in bronze. Bill Shankly, Matt Busby, Billy Bremner and Jackie Milburn have all had statues erected in their memory. Three of them are outside the venue of each man's legend, but in Newcastle, Milburn's statue was stuck right in the middle of the main drag, Northumberland Street.
George Best is alive - just - thankfully, but that should not preclude him from receiving the same honour as the quartet who have passed away. At last there would be a tangible recognition of his talents and, like the Milburn construction, it should not
be stuck outside a ground, not even Windsor Park where he played for Northern Ireland 16 times. George transcended such places, he was as big as Elvis. He was more than a footballer. He was a player.
Besides, Best never played club football in Belfast. Local scouts, and one from Leeds United, mistook his skinny frame for weakness rather than strength. Plus, Best's considerable contributions to the green shirt were undermined somewhat by his self-confessed longing to be part of a bigger nation with greater playing resources.
As another lyrical Belfast footballer, Derek Dougan, wrote in his book, How Not To Run Football: "Here was a brilliant player, an absolute genius, without the international showcase he needed. Had he been born English, he would have excited the world. In a Northern Ireland jersey he was rarely seen on a world stage." Dougan's book's cover has a picture of Best crucified.
Another Northern Ireland team-mate and later Best's manager, Terry Neill, once said: "In our hearts we knew we were not going to get to a World Cup and it left us with a feeling of sadness that each of us, as individuals, was not good enough to provide the platform for someone who could have got into any country's national team, including Brazil. It was like a guilt thing."
Guilt is never far from the Ulster Protestant psyche Best was born into, but it is to be hoped his recent death-scare has provoked the consciences of those who make decisions in council offices. A few years ago, when the leisure centre half a mile along the Montgomery Road from the Cregagh estate was being renamed, it was called the Robinson Centre. Peter Robinson was, and remains, the MP for East Belfast. He was never European Footballer of the Year.
Robinson would surely get votes by commissioning a statue of Best and erecting it at the entrance to the Cregagh. Today the only visible accolade on the estate is a mural dedicated to two UVF men. It does not have tourists jumping on the No 33 bus .
Famously, George Best jumped on it in July 1961, when the then terrified 15-year-old returned from his first trip to Old Trafford after just one day. "I remember that morning for I was on holiday," Dickie Best recalled. "I heard George's voice outside and thought: `It can't be him, he's only been away a day'. When he walked through the door I said: `What are you doing here?' He said he was homesick. I said: `That's all right son, grown men get homesick'."
George left again a couple of days later and was not to return this time. To think that his first journey to Manchester was the first time he wore long trousers is remarkable, all the more given that within two years this frightened teenager was playing in the same team as Bobby Charlton and Denis Law. Another two years and he was the first pop star footballer, opening boutiques, squiring beauty queens and being called the fifth Beatle.
Nearly as remarkable was that Dickie and Ann remained on the Cregagh. Ann continued to work in Gallagher's, Dickie still went to Harland and Wolff every day. He was there the night his son shook European football with his individual deconstruction of the great Benfica side in the Stadium of Light. "I was on the night shift in the shipyard at the time. I turned on the radio and there was this voice saying: `And George Best has two goals'. There was only about seven minutes gone. That was one of the most important nights for George. Afterwards the press and the locals went daft for him."
Ultimately the attention sent George daft. And his mother. In October 1978 Ann Best died in bed in Burren Way, an alcoholic 54-year-old. The day before she died George had been banned by FIFA, football's world governing body, because of a contractual dispute between Fulham and Los Angeles Aztecs. At 32, living in America, Best looked finished.
Ann Best was buried on a Saturday afternoon. This I know because, with all the other 12-year-olds playing for Rosetta Boys, we had gathered, as we did every Saturday, outside the row of shops on the Cregagh. There we used to stare at the gable wall Best practised against as if it contained magic bricks. Now, seeing him for the first time in the flesh, the mixture of sadness and excitement is strange to recall. It was, if memory serves, a big funeral.
All our young lives we had grown up in his wondrous shadow, listening to the tales and learning them off by heart. "I have found a genius," the five-word telegram Manchester United's scout Bob Bishop sent Matt Busby, among them. George was ours. It was vicarious fame; we would walk past Dickie Best's house pretending not to look in. Those who went to Lisnasharragh, the school George was at when he left for United, would always ask other children who their most famous ex-pupil was. So that they would ask back.
And then one day a young lad we had not seen before joined the team. He had flaxen hair. He looked like Rod Stewart. Suddenly we were given a new kit. Next a photographer appeared and a man with a notebook. They were from Shoot magazine. Rod Stewart turned out to be Ian Best, the youngest of George's five siblings, middle name, Busby.
But there could not be another; though Dickie was asked once by the posh wife of a United director: "Mr Best, how did you come to sire such a marvellous son?" He replied: "Why madam, if I was to show you here we would both be thrown out."
Dickie Best can laugh at that memory. That is a good thing, because for all the fame and glory George brought, there was an equal amount of tears and frustration. It is both Dickie and George's biggest and lasting regret that George did not do more for his mother. Dickie has been turned into an expert on alcoholism.
Maybe now, though, after Best's latest hospital encounter, Dickie will finally get back the smart, handsome son he lost some time around 1970. Belfast could do with him back, sober, now and again, too. The Cregagh should get a statue of its most famous one, not some cinematic cliche. And George? He says he wants to live until he is 100. I hope he lives forever.