Best's body arrives back in the North

George Best’s coffin arrived back in Northern Ireland today draped in a Manchester United flag.

The soccer legend’s remains were flown on a privately chartered plane into RAF Aldergrove, where his father Dickie and four sisters were among grieving family members waiting to meet it.

Best’s son Calum and his agent Phil Hughes were on the flight with it.

As relatives embraced near the runway, two pipers from the Field Marshall Montgomery pipe band played a lament at the head of the small party.

The body was put in the back of a hearse to be taken along a 20-mile route to the home of Best’s father in the Cregagh Estate, East Belfast, where it will be kept overnight ahead of tomorrow’s funeral when up to half a million people are expected to pay their final respects.