Best tells of struggle to deal with father's death

Television personality Calum Best spoke today of his continued struggle to come to terms with his alcoholic father’s death.

The son of footballer George Best said he had recently broken down in tears while working on a documentary about children brought up by parents with drink problems.

The presenter, who lost his father at 24, said he had been overwhelmed by emotion after visiting a rehabilitation centre.

“I went in there thinking this is strictly business,” he told GMTV, “I’m just going to be the presenter, and as soon as I started talking, there was so much emotion and so much underlying anger and confusion that I started crying and I thought... these tears could go on for some time.

“When I left it was such a relief, such a weight off my shoulders.”

Reflecting on his own childhood struggles, he added: “For me personally, when my dad was alive there was always hope.

“I always thought, oh, it’s Bestie, he’s going to pull through, he’ll be ok. But when he passed away I kind of lost all hope and went on a downward spiral myself.”

George Best, one of Manchester United’s most famous names and British football’s first superstar, died in 2005 after a lengthy battle with alcohol.

The wayward sporting genius quit the game when he should have enjoyed years more at the top, before his untimely death at the age of 59.

Famed for spending his nights propping up the bar at nightclubs and leaving in the early hours with beautiful blondes on his arm, he walked out of top class football in 1972.

Today, his son said he struggled to forge a relationship with his father during the latter part of his life.

“The alcohol had taken over so much, which it does in most cases (of alcoholism) that their brain doesn’t tell them to focus on loved ones or focus on health or focus on important things, it just says ’get yourself that next drink to make yourself feel better’.”

But Calum, a self-confessed former party guy who admitted going “off the rails” himself, added: “I reached a point in my life, I turned 29-years-old and I thought, you know what... I know how that story ends.

“I want to do myself proud, I want to do my dad proud, and I think to myself if I had known about some of these places that I know about now, when I was younger maybe I wouldn’t have got myself in the certain positions that I did.”

And he said he was now committed to raising awareness about similar domestic situations.

“You think there’s so much help out there and there’s so much known about the alcoholics themselves, but nobody realises that for how many alcoholics there’s three or four people around them that’s affected and it’s usually the children or the young adults of the alcoholics themselves,” he said.

“For me it ended in the worst case scenario – I lost my father.”