George Best & Me

‘There is no doubt in my mind that Waggy

was the man who actually cared for

George more than anyone else.’

Sir Michael Parkinson.

‘Two lads that thought there was no more behind.

But such a day tomorrow as today.

And to be boy eternal.’

‘The Winter’s Tale’ - William Shakespeare.

GEORGE BEST & ME

By Malcolm Wagner & Tom Page

Foreword by George Best

First published in 2010 by Empire Publications

Smashwords Edition

© Malcolm Wagner & Tom Page 2010

ISBN: 1901746690

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Published by Empire Publications at Smashwords

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Acknowledgements

Malcolm Wagner

I’d like to thank Tom Page for the amazing job he has done on this book. His patience with me as a semi-unwilling subject has been little short of memorable, although if I never see his tape recorder and microphone again it will be too soon. From him saying, You have a story to tell, to publication, seems to have taken an eternity. I guess I just don’t like talking about myself and would rather other people do the talking for me.

I’d also like to thank the great and good friends of mine who have contributed to this book, especially the little fella, Bestie, who Tom managed to pin down in the Manchester premises of what used to be our nightclub, Slack Alice to write the foreword for us.

To my exceptional in-laws, Kath and John, I’d like to say a big thank-you for all the kindness over the years. To my sister-in-law, Ruth, or, as she’s affectionately known these days, R Ruth and her fiance Barry, thanks for being a friend. My lovely cousin, Michele Backman, who was always there. Finally, to my beautiful wife, Jane, I’d like to say thank-you for always being there for me.

Tom Page

I’d like to thank those special people who helped me bring this book into being: To Waggy, who in the course of writing this book became my friend, thanks for sharing your incredible story with me. Without you none of this could have happened. Now I know why George Best valued your friendship.

To my superb ex-tutor and friend, Alick Ormerod, author of the classic Don Whillans biography, ‘Portrait of a Mountaineer’, I’d like to express my profound and enduring thanks for the encouragement and advice you’ve given me. During the days when I was faced with the chaos of putting this book together I always knew you were there to guide me. I will always be grateful to you for your expert opinion and friendship.

To Richard Frost of the Manchester Evening News and his wife Margaret, not only for reading the manuscript and giving me belief but for giving me that vital thing all writers need - the name, address and telephone number of a potential publisher.

To John Ireland and Ashley Shaw at Empire Publications I want to say a big thank-you for your technical expertise and for giving this book the wings to fly.

Finally, to those of you who make up my lovely family: I want to begin by thanking my adorable wife Jenny, for her enduring encouragement, love, patience and understanding. Also, to my talented sons, Tim and Dan, I want to say a big thank-you for always offering kind words of encouragement. Last but not least, I have to acknowledge my faithful dog, Kim, who loves me no matter what.

Foreword

Over the years Waggy’s given hundreds of unpaid interviews about me and today’s no exception. Once again, he’s here with me at the old Slack Alice nightclub premises in Manchester, giving answers to questions from a Channel 4 television documentary crew, so I suppose it’s only fair that I say something about him in return.

People who know me well will tell you that I’m not given to writing forewords for anybody’s books, other than my own that is, but in Waggy’s particular case, I’m prepared to make an exception and for two reasons. The first is that he’s a bloody nuisance and will drive me mad if I don’t and the second is that he owes me money, which I’ll only get back if I do this. Seriously though, we’ve been through so much together during our 40 years of friendship; I would have been really disappointed if he hadn’t asked me to say something.

Waggy and I met when I was just a young boy starting out at Manchester United; since then we’ve been partners in two Manchester nightclubs, Slack Alice and Oscars and travelled the world together. When I was playing, he’d be the first person I’d ask to go with me on any trip I took abroad because he was the only one I ever trusted to look after me. Sadly, he believed he was going on some cheap exotic holiday but always ended up spending a small fortune. That said, he always acted in my best interests and always diverted the flak away from me. I suppose what’s really important is that we’re still friends and always will be.

I can’t say enough good things about Waggy. People are always telling me what I mean to him and if I only say this once, I want him to know that I feel the same way about him. I love Waggy to death - he’s done so much for me. This is the man who’s pulled me out of a thousand holes, suffered pursuit by hostile football managers, police and mad women who all wanted to get their hands on me. I really do appreciate what he’s gone through for me. I also know that if anyone understands me in this world, then it’s Waggy and if he writes something about me it will be honest and fair.

Finally, I want to thank him for being a true friend and for always being there whenever I needed him. I hope you enjoy reading his story, I know I will.

George Best

Manchester. May 2004.

Introduction

Even before meeting Waggy, I kind of knew him. George would often go on about him being such a loyal and trusted friend. When I did meet him, I wasn’t disappointed. He was a quiet sort of man so gentle and very caring. More importantly, he didn’t pass me off as one of George’s bimbos, which I will always be grateful for.

You could tell straight away what he thought of George and I knew how much George thought of him. Waggy has no airs or graces and he doesn’t brag about things. He was a very dear and faithful friend to George in life.

Finally, I’ve liked Waggy since the moment we met, he’s always been very kind and generous towards George and me and I’m so glad I’m able to do something for him in return. I wish him and Tom every success with this book.

Alex Best

Prologue

Way back in May 2003, George Best and Michael Parkinson were together at what was then my hotel, the Grant Arms, in Ramsbottom, Lancashire, getting ready to speak at a dinner I’d organised in aid of the Foundation for Liver Research. At that time, George was on the mend following his liver transplant on 30th July 2002 and enjoying a regular life with his beautiful wife Alex by his side. In fact, during the meal, George even leant across and asked if the sherry trifle contained alcohol. If it’s got real sherry in it, Waggy, he said, then I can’t touch it.

I listened to George’s words with a certain apprehension, thinking, has George really got his alcohol problem under control this time? There was no reason to doubt him because he looked great, proof positive that he was looking after himself. We were all so happy for George that night, believing at last he was getting on with living a life of some quality.

So much has changed since then. George died on the 25th November 2005, following a long and difficult battle with alcoholism. Another contributor to this book, Bernard Manning, a man who brightened my life up during the sixties when I appeared at his nightclub, the Embassy, has also passed away. There’s no doubt that the world, at least the one I knew, is rapidly changing.

George was such an enormous influence on my life during the forty-odd years we were friends. In fact, it was George who first urged me get a biography together, telling me, It’s a chance to tell your side of the story, Waggy. It’s a shame he’ll never get to share the pleasures the publication of this book will bring me. I had visions of giving him a copy and pulling his leg about what’s been written about him. That would have had him poring over every page.

I do have some regrets about the time I spent with George; for a start I wish I could have done more to save him from himself but George was always his own man and rarely took advice from any quarter. That said and in spite of George’s constant disregard for accepting anybody’s advice, I did my best never to judge him. At root, we were true friends and I loved him as a friend should and in return I know that he loved me. It was the basis of our friendship and lasted until the day he died.

This then, is my perspective on what’s been an incredible life. The madness and mayhem of living a life in Manchester during the sixties and seventies may have drifted into history but those years working and running around the city will stay with me forever. No question about it, Manchester during this period was the most exciting city in the world and George and I were smack bang in the middle of everything that was new and exciting.

The last forty-odd years have been a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows for me, forty-odd years of adventure surrounded by the famous, the funny, the clever and the downright daft but forty-odd years I wouldn’t swap for a gold clock.

All life is a journey and at one very important level it’s all about the people we meet along the way. This then is my story, about my journey and the people I met along the way. I hope you enjoy it.

Malcolm Wagner,

September 2010.

1: ‘The End’

Phil Hughes, George Best’s agent and manager, rang me on the 3rd October 2005, telling me that George had been rushed into intensive care at London’s Cromwell Hospital. He’d been admitted after suffering kidney problems caused by side effects from the immuno-suppressive drugs he was taking. These were the drugs George used to prevent his body from rejecting his transplanted liver.

After receiving Phil’s call, I rang the hospital every day to get an update on George’s condition. At this early stage, I wasn’t unduly concerned after being continually re-assured by hospital staff that George was getting stronger by the day. Also, my experience of George was such that he always got better, no matter what life threw at him. That was the nature of Bestie. As far as I was concerned, George was invincible and this was just another hurdle he’d eventually clamber over.

My wife Jane and I took two separate visits to see him in hospital. On both occasions, the signs were that despite being seriously ill, he’d eventually recover. At the end of October 2005, however, George became seriously ill again but once more, he somehow recovered and began to improve. I continued in my belief that George was on the mend and it was just a matter of time before he came out of hospital and went home. At this stage of George’s illness, our visits had started to become mini-holidays; we’d drive down to London, visit George at the Cromwell Hospital and then drive on to stay with friends for a couple of days.

It was only after visiting George in late November 2005 that I became seriously worried about him. I drove down to London in the belief that George’s health was improving, only to discover that he was so ill he couldn’t take visitors. I drove back to Manchester, feeling sick and worried about what the next few days might bring. George’s health went rapidly downhill from this point on. George went from being relatively ill to being on the verge of death. It was unbelievable just how quickly his health deteriorated.

I sat at home in the early hours of the 25th November 2005, with Jane, watching Sky Television’s hourly updates on George’s deteriorating health. I stared at my television set in a state of silent disbelief, not knowing what the hell to do with myself. However, when Professor Williams suddenly appeared on my screen stating that George’s life could be counted in hours rather than days, I flipped.

Professor Williams really was the oracle and if he said that George Best was about to die, then George was about to die. At this point, Jane took over and told me what to do.

Don’t walk around the room worrying yourself sick, she said, go and see him now, before it’s too late. I realised Jane was talking complete sense and decided that if Bestie was going to die, then I was going to be at his bedside when it happened.

I rang the man who had introduced me to George forty years earlier, Danny Bursk, to see if he wanted to go down to London with me. Typically, Danny had also been monitoring George’s fast-deteriorating state of health on Sky, had heard Professor Williams’ statement and was about to call me and suggest the same. Once Danny and I made the decision to go and be with George, everything became something of a blur.

We raced over to Manchester airport, phoning Phil Hughes along the way to tell him about our plans to be with George. We then caught a plane to London, jumped on the tube and whilst Danny nipped into the train station loo, I rang Phil Hughes to let him know where we were.

We’re almost with you, Phil, I said, how’s he holding up?

There was an awkward silence. Phil didn’t need to tell me.

He’s gone hasn’t he? I said slowly. He’s done a runner on me again, hasn’t he?

Yeah, Phil said quietly, he went about twenty minutes ago but you and Danny come over, the family’s here and they’d love to see you.

George died at 1.06pm, on the 25th November 2005, in London’s Cromwell Hospital from a lung infection and multiple organ failure. He was just 59 years old.

I don’t think anyone is ever prepared for the news that somebody close to them has just passed away, no matter how predictable the outcome. I know I wasn’t. For Danny and me it was a sombre taxi ride through the streets of London, my mind filled with memories of George and the terrible price he’d just paid.

I thought about George’s dad, Dickie, waiting to meet Danny and me at the hospital, struggling to come to terms with the tragic loss of his eldest son whilst trying to present a brave front to the rest of his family. I thought about a lot of things on the way over to the hospital.

Arriving at the hospital, we managed to dodge the media by meeting up with Phil Hughes at a side door. I really felt for Phil, he’s a good man who had loved George. I was also aware that Phil had experienced some torrid years with George: years when George’s alcoholism had brought chaos to their relationship, a time when George’s life was completely out of control.

In contrast, the early years I’d spent with George were marvellous, a time when he was completely together. Backed by the glorious soundtrack of the Swinging Sixties, George had slowly carved out a reputation for himself as one of the world’s most gifted footballers and in the process positively changed my own life forever. They were the good years, the years of laughter and fun; a time when George rarely touched a drop of alcohol. As we walked along the hospital corridor with Phil, I realised just how fortunate I’d been in sharing and enjoying George’s best years.

As we entered the reception room adjoining George’s bedroom, we were greeted by George’s son, Calum, George’s dad, Dickie and the rest of the Best family. Not for the first time, I marvelled at Dickie’s dignity and composure. I’d long admired the quiet and resolute qualities of George’s dad. Here he was, greeting me like a long lost son at a time when he must have been crying inside, apparently more concerned with my well-being than his own. We talked little but seemed to say a lot.

Meanwhile, the world’s press and television, eager to get an update on the state of George’s health, began to demand attention and as the Best family prepared to impart their terrible news to a waiting world, we left. In every respect it was all over. It was time to go home.

As a dull afternoon descended over London, Danny and I slipped out of a side entrance to begin our slow and sad journey back to George’s spiritual home of Manchester, both of us convinced that the world of football would never, ever, see the likes of a George Best again.

2: ‘Magical Mystery Tour’

In the weeks and months following George’s death it became blindingly obvious that the media had decided to focus on George’s fantastic career as a footballer and not the troubled, later years of his life. It was a positive, which cheered me up. George’s family, who were still coming to terms with his death, must also have been pleased at the way the media responded.

Like a lot of Bestie’s friends, I was quietly worried about how the media might react. Twenty-seven years earlier, when George’s mother, Ann, had died from an alcohol related illness, the tabloid press concentrated on that aspect of her death, insinuating that George’s own problems with alcohol were somehow her fault, an hereditary/genetic defect she’d passed on at birth.

The media, at that time, were totally insensitive to George’s grief, with no mention whatsoever of the fact that, in life, his mum not only provided him with a loving and secure home but had also given the world one of its most gifted sportsmen. I know that the negative perspective the press adopted upset George greatly, given that he loved his mum dearly and was more than aware of the personal suffering both his parents had endured in order to provide him, his brother and sisters, with a stable and loving home.

Personally, I’d never viewed George’s life as a vale of tears. George loved life. Even when times were tough he’d always accepted his predicament with a stoicism and courage I’d rarely witnessed in another human being, other than his dad perhaps. As far as George was concerned, life was for living, never once endorsing that apocryphal line, ‘Where did it all go wrong, George?’ As far as George was concerned it never went wrong. For George there was no such thing as normal life, there was just life and he lived it. It was a great philosophy for living but sometimes it landed him in a rake of trouble.

George’s early life, by his own admission, was brilliant and he used to talk a lot about his boyhood days on the Cregagh Estate in Belfast. In fact, when it came to our childhood days, George and I had a lot in common. We both came from loving homes although we diverged when it came to the bit about being born with a ball at our feet. My dad’s ambition was for me to become an entertainer. In fact, my dad was so ambitious for me that he used to enter me in talent competitions, which just happened to be held every year in the holiday hotel we stayed at in Bournemouth. On a couple of occasions, after a couple of weeks of hard coaching by my manager, agent and script-writer, also known as dad, I actually won.

That said, I suppose George and our entire generation of kids had a lot in common. We were the first generation of 2nd World War children to be born into families who struggled to make ends meet. Most families, like ours, got by on ration cards and the rationale that tomorrow was always going to be better than today.

George had been born the eldest son of Dickie and Ann Best at the Belfast Royal Maternity Hospital, on the 22nd of May 1946. I was born on the 3rd of April 1945, almost a year before Bestie, at St Mary’s Maternity Hospital in central Manchester, the only child of Betty and Norman Wagner. Mum and dad named me Malcolm Irvin Wagner, although it would be my destiny to go through life with the nick-name, Waggy.

After the usual spell of time spent recovering in hospital, my mother had taken me home to 73, Windsor Road in Prestwich, a suburb of north Manchester, where they fed me at one end and emptied me out at the other for years. During which time I’d put stains on the carpets and furniture only a bonfire could remove.

As fate would have it, I’d been born into a warm, loving, Jewish family, where mum and dad worked together as hairdressers. My mother did ladies’ hair and my father was a gents’ barber. We lived above the hairdressing shops. I say above the shops but a large section of the ground floor formed part of our living space and included a big, bright lounge, a spacious dining room and a large kitchen. That was a lot of room for a kid to move around and grow up in.

At the back of our house we had this great, big, concrete garage. The garage might have been big and ugly but it was going to be handy in the future. It’s only now, when I look back, that I realise just how important certain rooms and buildings like the garage, have been to my life. During my teens, that ugly outhouse would become a social club and meeting place for all of my mates. It would be the place where the pop group, which would have a huge part to play in my life, The Whirlwinds, would learn to play. In those early days however, it was being used for its proper purpose, which was housing dad’s car but not for long.

Our house didn’t look much from the front but it went back forever. As a child it seemed enormous to me. Mum and dad had ingeniously constructed two separate hairdressing shops for their businesses on the ground floor of the house, each shop having its own entrance and exit. The front door of mum’s salon opened out onto the warm, sunny hustle and bustle of Windsor Road, inviting all the local ladies in to experience the latest in woman’s hair styling, coffee, tea, glossy magazines and tons of gossip.

In contrast, the entrance to my dad’s shop was at the end of a long, dark, narrow corridor which ran down the side of the house. Dad’s front door invited all the local men in for a short back and sides and the latest couple of jokes. It was a place where men sat and chatted to escape the realities of everyday life, somewhere they were able to relax, laugh and be themselves. For me, it was home and I loved the place.

I hope I’m not giving the impression that our house was grand, because it certainly wasn’t. In the early days, like most families in the area, we had cold lino on the bedroom floor and ice on the inside of the windows whenever it froze. Not that we lived in a shoebox or ate coal either, it was just that, like most people at the time, we never had central heating, although that would come in time.

Looking back on my childhood, I’m left with a feeling of being part of one enormous, caring society and of being loved. I guess I’m lucky to be able to carry this memory of childhood around with me. Romantic images and feelings aside, the families who lived in our area were all very integrated, all sticking together and looking out for each other. It’s a warm and secure feeling, which just goes to show what a brilliant childhood I had.

One of the earliest memories I have of living on Windsor Road, is of me pedalling my two-wheeler bike outside our row of shops, with dad shepherding me, arms outstretched, making sure that if the bike fell over he’d catch it. Of course I jest but whenever I did fall over, he was always there. The year was 1949 and I was just four years old.

It really does amaze me how certain memories like that have remained in my head, never fading with time. For some reason or other, I’m able to re-run the scenario of my dad, the bike and me in my mind eternally. I know it’s a small, almost insignificant event but it keeps returning to the forefront of my memory whenever I think of childhood and happy times. I think it’s probably the moment when I first became aware of just how loving and protective my parents were towards me.

Some of my earliest memories are of watching dad at work in his barber’s shop, dodging around the chair, an ash-laden cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth as he laughed and joked with his customer. My dad’s ability as a barber and a gagster ensured that a constant stream of clients would return to his shop time and time again. As a young man he’d been a member of the famous Jewish Minstrel Troupe and entertainment was in his blood. He was certainly in the right job for a man who liked telling a joke.

My mother, Betty, was unbelievable: she was a rock, she ran the house, ran the businesses, paid the bills and everything else in between. She was wonderful. We were so close and I loved her so much. I remember having conversations with my mum that I could never have with my dad. She was always there to advise and encourage me and point me in the right direction. My mum really knew the wood from the trees and was the first person I’d go to whenever I was faced with a problem. In writing this I’m not putting my dad down in any way, it was just that I had completely different and separate relationships with the pair of them. When I consider that my parents had to balance their businesses, run the home and look after me, I’m amazed they were able to devote so much time to me.

I like to think I was never spoilt but all my relations doted on me. My maternal grandfather and grandmother, Sackloff, loved me so much and took every opportunity to show it. They lived, along with my uncle Maurice and my aunts, Bella and Janey, who all remained single throughout their lives, in a big, old Victorian house in which they also ran a tailoring business.

The house was very Gothic-looking, dark and mysterious and any kid with a vivid imagination could easily have imagined Dracula spending his days laid in an earth-filled coffin in one of the upstairs bedrooms but the house held no fears for me. I used to love wandering around Grandma’s house, armed with a wooden stake, a silver bullet and a clove of garlic tied around my neck - just in case.

My grandma Sackloff, another Jewish matriarch, ran the household. Both my grandparents were emigrant Russian Jews who’d managed to escape the Pogroms which had blighted Russia in the early part of the last century. God only knows the trials and tribulations they endured prior to arriving in England.

The vernacular language of Russian Jews is Yiddish and it was spoken, along with a smattering of broken English, in my grandma’s house. As a kid, the term I used for Yiddish was broken biscuits. I’d evidently confused the term with broken English. The Yiddish language is rich, comic and very expressive, where words are accentuated with sweeping hand gestures. Whenever my grandparents spoke Yiddish, it made them appear stylish, continental, extremely exotic and very argumentative.

We went round to grandma Sackloff’s home for tea pretty often and were always made to feel welcome. However, there was one small downside to our visits. For a couple of years, my Uncle Maurice almost always created a scene whenever we sat down to eat. For some reason or other, he was kind of jealous of my being the focus of the family’s attention.

Grandma always ensured that whenever we visited, chicken, which she saw as a great delicacy, was on the menu. The simple act of my grandma ensuring that I got the chicken wings, which she called flugels, (pronounced fli-gulls) was guaranteed to cause uproar with my Uncle Maurice. Then in his early 20’s, Uncle Maurice saw himself as my grandma’s little boy, a little boy who’d been on the receiving end of the chicken wings since he’d been a kid. Even though I was young, I intuitively realised that Uncle Maurice didn’t like the idea of some snotty-nosed, little sod like me, stealing what he considered to be his birthright.

Uncle Maurice’s emotional and facial movement from, the Mensch, the good boy, ‘Would you like another cup of tea and a biscuit, sister Betty dear,’ to the Malach Hamovous, the devil, ‘Those flugels are mine you thieving little sod,’ was a sight to behold. The words are mine but I swear Uncle Maurice’s facial changes mirrored his emotions perfectly. He certainly knew how to put the wind up me. I’m being truthful here when I say that he used to scare the bloody life out of me. However, I could never understand why Uncle Maurice behaved so badly, because he was always going to be on a loser. I’m sure he didn’t realise what was going on in his head any more than the rest of us. Talk about dancing to the beat of a very distant drum. On every visit, grandma would make me feel really special. There was no doubt in my small but very attentive mind that someone who adored me was picking me out for special attention and I lapped it up.

Today, I’m acutely aware of the pain my Uncle Maurice must have suffered at having his nose put out of joint by his own mother: he was certainly jealous of the attention grandma gave to me. Grandma, in charge of her house until the end, almost always put Uncle Maurice in line whenever he complained about the preferential treatment she gave me. ‘The flugels are his, Maurice, he’s just a baby, you let him have the flugels,’ she’d tell him. Grandma’s words only served to make matters worse for Uncle Maurice, exacerbated by her action of always throwing me a loving smile as a form of compensation for his poor behaviour. For a while, I think Uncle Maurice must have hated the bloody sight of me.

This scenario, in one form or another, would be repeated every time we went round for tea. As the years passed however, Uncle Maurice’s outbursts became a family joke. Realising that he was on a hiding to nothing, he eventually threw in the towel and joined my queue of admirers. As I’ve said earlier, Uncle Maurice never married and consequently never had the pleasure of having kids of his own. Instead, he spent the bulk of his life looking after me.

In later years, Uncle Maurice finally got the wild staring and muttering under control and became one of my best friends, spending a lot of his time having fun with me in Manchester’s city centre. He would continually tell me, ‘One day, Malcolm, I’m going to make you a very wealthy boy’ but upon his death he left a