13 years on, nobody can compare with the Best
ALEX BEST ON LOVE, LOSS AND LIFE WITH GEORGE
IT’S not every day you get to meet someone who has an airport named in honour of their deceased ex-husband. Yet when Alex Best makes one of her regular trips to the North, it’s through George Best Belfast City Airport that she often passes. ‘It is a bit weird,’ she admits. ‘It’s like being back home somehow. Yeah, it’s a strange feeling, but lovely.’
She’s in Belfast on a couple of missions this week: her first is a promotional gig for Hannaway Hilltown Kitchens. Alex has been edging further away from the limelight towards a career in property and interiors, and she has used the brand on a number of the fixer-uppers she has invested in down the years.
‘I’ve always really enjoyed doing up properties, especially the house in Northern Ireland (a cottage near the sea in Portavogie, which went on the market earlier this year),’ she says. ‘I’m a very artistic person, but I’ve always been very fortunate in buying properties at the right time.’
Yet Alex is in Belfast for another, entirely more poignant reason: this weekend marks the 13th anniversary of footballing legend George’s death in 2005. After she speaks with the Irish Daily Mail, Alex will head to Roselawn Cemetery on the outskirts of the
city, where George is buried in a family plot, and lay flowers, just as she does every year.
‘It’s always a sad day, but it is what it is,’ she shrugs. ‘All you can do is think of the happy times.’
The pair had signed the decree nisi on their divorce only months before George’s death at the age of 59, amid a highly acrimonious marriage split.
Yet in the rear-view mirror, Alex notes that the marriage contained as many good memories as bad. For a great deal of their marriage, Best battled alcoholism and ill health, with Alex his long-suffering carer. Their union was besieged by drunken rages, physical violence, the long recuperation from a liver transplant in 2002 and, at the end, tawdry tales of infidelity splashed across the papers. After three years of helping him through his illness, Alex picked up a Sunday paper to read reports that he had been having an affair with a 25-year-old blonde barmaid and a 33-year-old mother of two.
However, before George’s death in December 2005, the couple had reconciled, and Alex got to say her emotional goodbyes at his bedside, just seven hours before he died. ‘I’m just pleased I had a chance to say goodbye,’ she admits.
Belfast has of course changed a lot since Alex, now based in Surrey, moved there in the year 2000. At the time, George was very much in the grip of alcohol addiction and, in March of that year, been diagnosed with severe liver damage. George and Alex, who married in 1995, were living in London’s affluent Chelsea neighbourhood at the beginning of the year, and battling the demon drink in Chelsea — not least in a town where everyone wanted to brag that they’d bought George Best a drink — was proving impossible.
‘We were thinking of getting a second holiday home anyway, and we’d been here in Northern Ireland to see family, so we had a look at houses,’ recalls Alex. ‘We started looking initially in Southern Ireland. But we came here and just loved it and decided that rather than it being a holiday home, we’d move here permanently so he could get away from London.’
Despite it being a turbulent time, Alex has mainly good memories of the few years she spent living in the North.
‘I remember lots of puppy walks on the beach, lots of fresh air, and doing up the house gave George something to think about,’ recalls Alex. ‘I made so many good friends here who remain my friends to this day.
‘It was a difficult time but a special time too — George was enjoying himself and enjoying his life, and getting close to this family again,’ she adds. ‘He hadn’t really had that contact with them since he was 15. Back then his sister lived down the road and she always popped in.
SHE still keeps in contact with the Belfast Bests, speaking regularly to George’s younger brother Ian and his sister Grace, as well as various nieces, nephews and cousins.
‘It’s mainly through Facebook, but when I’m in [Northern Ireland] I’m often dragged from pillar to post, so I don’t really get a chance to see anyone,’ admits Alex.
There is also occasional correspondence with Calum, George’s only son who was born in 1981 and has seemingly inherited many of his father’s traits.
A rather eyebrow-raising episode was revealed in Calum’s 2015 autobiography, Second Best, with the real- ity TV star claiming his inebriated father attacked him when he was just 14 years old, after wrongly accusing him of having an affair with Alex.
At the time of the book’s release, she was sanguine about the rancour that Calum’s recollections had caused, noting: ‘Calum has every right to say what he wants about his father. If you are doing an autobiography you’ve got to be brutally honest, otherwise there’s no point in writing one.’
But for now, the two appear to be on good terms: ‘We text from time to time, and I saw him at a party of a mutual friend of ours a couple of weeks ago, where we got to have a good old catch up,’ she reveals.
In the main, Alex likes to give London’s glitzy party scene a bit of a wide berth.
‘Aside from the properties, I’m working on a few TV ideas with a production company, and I’ve done a test reel for voiceover work,’ she reveals. ‘I’ve a lovely dog that takes up a lot of time. I mean, I still like going out and seeing my friends, but I feel I’ve done all that now. I prefer having a date with my TV, watching the Real Housewives Of New York with my dog on my lap.’
PERHAPS not surprisingly, she is hooked on the current series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, in which she appeared in 2004. The third series was something of a high water mark in the show’s 17-year history: Alex starred on the series alongside eventual winner Kerry Katona and acerbic Sex Pistol John Lydon. It was also the series in which Katie Price first met Peter Andre, who she went on to marry. Yet even in a series packed with must-see moments, Alex’s bug-related Bushtucker Trial remains one of the most watched events in the show’s history, with 45 million people reportedly tuning in to watch her get to grips with being feathered and covered in bugs. ‘I’m watching the show now and feeling a bit sorry for those people in there,’ she laughs. ‘At the same time, it’s a really interesting experience to watch after you’ve done it — you know where the cameras and the various bits and pieces are, so it’s weird to see it on screen. You just know everyone is starving and so bored. But I did really enjoy it in there.
‘The thing about the trials is what you can’t see at home — the smell (of the insects) was awful.’
As to why she signed up for a stint in the I’m A Celebrity jungle to begin with, she notes: ‘I had watched the two (series) before, and I was addicted. What can I say, I like a challenge! I was offered the opportunity of a lifetime so I thought, why not? What happens too is that with all the phone votes, money goes to charity, so I got to raise £170,000 (€191,000) for my local children’s charity.’
Sounds like as good a reason as any to partake, but at the time, there had been the odd snide commenter or two accusing her of opportunism for appearing on the show.
Alex has taken a fair swathe of criticism down the years. Some have accused her, somewhat wrongly, of gold-digging, even though when she wed George he was pretty well broke. He may have been one of the world’s first sports superstars, but by the
1990s he was selling off his medals, and their first married residence was his tiny flat in Chelsea, where she had to wash her underwear by hand in the sink. Besides, she was more of a rugby girl at the time.
More recently, Alex appeared on This Morning, noting that some sort of spernatural ghost, possibly George’s, had been switching on lights and moving items around her home.
It was a frank admission for Alex, who describes herself as very spiritual, yet the Twitter commentariat were quick to accuse her of cashing in on George’s name.
‘It was Eamonn (Holmes) who suggested that it could be George, and I said no, it could be anything,’ she noted at the time. I ask her what it was that attracted her to Best when they first met in Tramp nightclub in London: she was 22 to his 48.
‘Oh, everything,’ she says decisively. ‘His personality, humour, cheekiness, those really bright blue eyes — he had had amazing charisma. He’s a very down-to-earth person and I didn’t feel at all that I was talking to the greatest footballer ever.’
In the years since George’s death, public awareness and understanding about addiction and mental health challenges has heightened exponentially.
‘I think it’s brilliant that because of the work of mind charities, more people are opening up about addiction,’ she says. ‘It’s very brave of people, as it’s always been a taboo subject. For people with alcoholism or drug addiction, to know some celebrities have gone through it too gives them a bit of hope and comfort. It’s a lot more open these days.’
Similarly, the ‘too much too soon’ experience of the current crop of Premiership footballers has undergone a sea change since George’s heyday: ‘I think nowadays, if the same thing happened (to a young footballer, you wouldn’t have anyone shoving them into the spotlight,’ observes Alex. ‘George didn’t have anyone to help him. Managers and agents are a lot more careful and protective — people have learned from George’s experience.’
These days, Alex is very happily single. She enjoyed a long-term relationship with businessman Howard Kruger after George died, but they split close to a decade ago. Yet even now, the shadow of George looms large, as his considerable legacy has proved intimidating to potential suitors.
‘I think for anyone, those are very big boots to fill, and given that he was such a legend I suppose for some men it’s a bit daunting,’ Alex reasons.
‘I did have a long relationship and I dated a few people, but I really enjoy my own company. I’ve lots of single friends, too. I’m not against meeting someone — if I did, it would be fantastic. But put it this way, I’m not about to go on Tinder or anything!’
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Nowadays, if the same thing happens to a young footballer, they wouldn’t be shoved into the spotlight. George didn’t have anyone to help him. Agents and managers have learned from George’s experience