Aycliffe Avenue, Manchester

At the age of 15, Best was spotted playing football by a Manchester United scout, Bob Bishop, who sent a telegram to the team’s manager, Matt Busby, saying ‘I think I’ve found you a genius’. Best came to England for a trial, but returned to Belfast after just two days, complaining of homesickness. It was only after Busby himself contacted his parents that Best returned to Manchester.

He was installed in digs, at 9 Aycliffe Avenue, under the watchful eye of the landlady, Mrs Fullaway. ‘United had a rule,’ Gordon says. ‘If you were a single man you had to live in digs approved by the club. He did his growing up there, and Mrs Fullaway became a second mother to him. He was living there with another United player, David Sadler, and Mrs Fullaway’s son, Steve, who became his running-around-town mate.’

When this picture was taken, Best was already playing regularly in United’s first team, in front of 50,000 people each week, and by the st a nda rd s of a ny ot her work i ng-cla s s boy, extremely well-paid. ‘Once he got over his shyness, he was one of the lads, like the rest of us,’ his team-mate Paddy Crerand remembers. ‘He’d come along to the bingo at the church, and we’d go to the local and were allowed a shandy each.’

When, in 1969, Best had his own house built – a split-level residence in the affluent Manchester suburb of Bramhall, he stipulated to the architect that it should have a sunken bath and a snooker room. In 1971, struggling with drink problems, he went missing for a week: seeking refuge from the limelight, he holed up in the London flat of the actress Sinéad Cusack. As a condition of his return to Manchester United, he was ordered to go back to Mrs Fullaway’s. ‘Steve Fullaway had a wife and kid by then,’ Gordon says. ‘So there was Mrs Fullaway, Steve and his family, and George – in a tiny threebedroomed house.’ Aged 25, Best, now the most notorious footballer in Britain, was back in digs.