Freddie and The Belfast Boy

[apolla]

I have just lost a post about Freddie Mercury for the second time. Fuck it, let us do this quickly:

Love you Freddie. Miss you Freddie. Wouldn't be me without you. Hope the celestial champagne is flowing, dear boy.

*

Both times, I was writing about George Best, so I can only surmise that Somebody Up There doesn't want me to say what I want to say. Even if it is George's old drinking buddy Philip Lynott, I am going to say this if I have to retype it sixteen times.

Legend Best 'enters final hours' says the BBC. He doesn't have long, but only the blindly optimistic have expected him to recover.

The Belfast Boy is not going to get a hero's death. It will have been and will continue to be slow and painful, probably more for his family and the people that love him than for him. But you know what? George Best has not been a true hero for decades. Literally decades. That's alcoholism for you, I guess. Had he died in the 70s, he'd be amongst the pantheon of our great heroes, loved and admired far and wide. He'd probably be more sainted even than those tragic Busby Babes. But he lived, and so we have watched as alcoholism has ravaged this man and those who love him.

And I'm sorry, but the media has to take some of the blame. Not for his inability (or indeed unwillingness) to kick alcohol even after getting a new liver, for only he can (and should) shoulder that. The media really needed to leave him alone years ago. To just say "fine George, get on with your life", but instead they built him up and up and so he and second wife Alex became tabloid regulars when what he needed was peace and quiet. The last thing he ever needed was front pages and headlines.

This country deified George Best, and I suspect that this is a contributory factor to what is happening right now. We've even had a kind of grotesque deathwatch going on for the past days.

Terrible as it is to say, if he'd died in the 70s, he'd be a real legend. As it is, he is an empty shell of someone who used to be great a very long time ago. I wish I didn't have to say it. When he got the new liver, half the country said he was undeserving, and the other half said 'give him a chance'. I was in the latter group, and I'm a little heartbroken that he didn't manage to take his chance for long.

Perhaps the real reason I care at all is because I suspect that George's fate is the one all my boys risked had they lived. Would Philip Lynott be like George if he'd not died? Would Jim? I'm going to say not, because it's the only way I'll get to sleep tonight.

Lastly, George Best was a legend once. Please let us not forget that. Perhaps with death, George will regain the grace and beauty he once possessed. I've seen the old film of George playing in that famous 1968 European Championship and in a hundred other games. He was a great player. So brilliant that even casual football fans like me were left breathless watching. David Beckham may play for a hundred years and never be quite like George.

George Best was a rock and roll sportsman. He was dishevelled and scruffy and handsome. He was all those things Keith Moon was, all the things Philip was, right down to the charisma that got him not one but two Miss Worlds.

God love you George, and so do the British, for we love nobody so much as a fallen legend. God love you, and may you find the peace you deserve.

***

Have now seen Goblet of Fire. Might talk about it over the weekend here, but while I found the second third funny and the last third affecting, I was annoyed to see that the 'style over content' theory was still being adhered to. However, much love for Doctor Casanova and the endlessly brilliant Brendan Gleeson. So glad he got to keep his more usual accent.