Well, George Best finally died at 2pm yesterday and, inevitably, the media has gone completely over-the-top.
In fact his death was a classic study of the modern media. There was the extremely distasteful revelling in the poor sod's last minutes. A media scrum outside the hospital, his consultant being quizzed over exactly how many hours he had left, the fake sentimentality, the tired rehashing of accepted truths by reporters who have next to no idea about who Best really was.
Calum Best arrived looking his best. Fortunately, in this one very small area, the media behaved usefully and largely ignored him.
And then of course the endless re-runs of goals, and the same footage as we've seen every other time Ole George has got in trouble: S-type Jag; coming down the steps of a nightclub; early training days; pouring out champagne.
George is lucky in one sense. Everyone had already decided that his footballing genius would take pride of place and his grotesque alcoholism reduced to a mere sidebar – even though the alcohol was responsible for his very early retirement from the game. It has been so effectively glossed over that I've already had friends telling me this alternate reality as if it were hard fact.
Not so, for example, Peter Cook, who continued to show moments of pure comic genius until his last days. Cook however was painted as the man whose alcoholism ate away at his humour and humanity.
In this country, we still have a very childish and narrow-minded view of alcoholism. And even though Bestie's death gave one more opportunity to deal with it more maturely and intelligently, it seems no one has bothered to pick up the gauntlet.
Which leads me to the nasty-but-true headline that the Sun should have run this morning. In fact, The Sun has already moved on from Best actually being dead and started created even more mad media hype with the headline: “Biggest funeral since Di.” Expect to be told numerous times over the next few days by utter imbeciles “you know his funeral will be as big as Di's”. And so another induced media event is built.
Anyway, here's my front page. I don't imagine it would have been quite as popular 🙂
