ARCHIVE: George Best, perhaps the greatest footballer of his or any other generation, passed away quietly today with his family at his bedside. In the 1960s, George Best burst on to the pitch and kicked off a glamorous new era of football. He would get you off your seat ` 'He couldn't have done that. He did that? Unbelievable. With model good looks, razor-sharp wit and Irish charm, George Best became the world's first superstar footballer. ARCHIVE: Best's attitudes are not those of an athlete, but of a pop star. The same can be said of his salary. Later in life, George would famously quip, 'I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. 'The rest I just squandered.' But in reality, it was the booze that would cost George the most. I like gettin' drunk. (LAUGHTER) I love it. (CHUCKLES) You just knew the ending ` this awful car crash that was gonna happen. Alcoholism would plague George throughout his lifetime. That demon inside him, which was the drink, I think it literally took over him. Exactly 10 years ago, on the 25th of November 2005, George Best, one of Britain's greatest ever footballers, died. He was 59. ARCHIVE: His was a life of bright talent darkened by drink. George Best fought a very public battle with the bottle. Alcohol undoubtedly had a dramatic effect upon his health. But in the end, was it drink that took his life? Copyright Able 2017 Dr Jason Payne-James is an internationally recognised specialist in forensic and legal medicine. His expertise has been called on by the National Crime Agency, the Metropolitan Police and government task forces in the US and the UK. Now, on the tenth anniversary of George Best's death, he's uncovering the truth behind the footballing legend's untimely demise. George Best's lifelong struggle with alcoholism has been well documented. But I have here his death certificate, and that lists multiple causes of death. Alcohol isn't amongst them. So I want to investigate what happened in the months and weeks leading up to his death, to find out, if alcohol wasn't involved, why did he die? To help him unravel the mystery, Dr Payne-James has gained exclusive access to the doctors' accounts of George Best's final days. 11.22am, Monday the 26th of September 2005. George Best is admitted to the private Cromwell Hospital in London, a short distance from his Chelsea home. He's accompanied by his friend and agent, Phil Hughes. He was wheezing a lot, he was coughing a lot, and just very, very weak. He had to have assistance to get him into bed. George has been suffering with flu-like symptoms for almost a month. I was absolutely convinced that he would be there for a couple of weeks, and they'd fix whatever it was, and we'd be back out again. The first thing that's noticeable about George is for a man of his age ` he's 59 ` is that he's frail and he's underweight. And this could be caused by a whole host of conditions related to his alcohol dependence. As a footballer, George had never relied on his physical size to succeed. He was a skinny 14-year-old from a Belfast council estate, when in 1963, he was signed by Manchester Untied. No one had ever seen a player quite like him. He could tackle better than full backs, he could head better than centre halves, dribble past players as if they weren't there. He was left-footed, right-footed. And he scored some of the best goals I've ever seen. By his early 20s, George had firmly established himself as the club's star player. And it's in the back of the net! (CHEERING) George Best! Young, famous and handsome, he quickly found himself caught up in Manchester's Swinging '60s social scene. George wanted to be one of the swingers, if you like. Basically, he was a very shy sort of guy. Initially, he wasn't a great tippler. The attraction for George was that drink fulfilled him socially. But soon, George was embracing the city's nightlife with the same passion he had for football. By the early 1970s, the stories of his drinking and partying were becoming almost as legendary as his performances on the pitch. He was at the casino with Miss World, and he'd won �20,000, you know, and he's gone back to this lovely hotel room, and he's got the 20 grand out on the bed, and he's got Miss World in her little negligee. And Paddy, the waiter, comes up and then looks at Miss World on the bed in her negligee and looks at the �20,000 and turns to my dad, and he goes, 'George, where did it all go wrong?' But it was already starting to go wrong for George. His love of drinking and womanising was leading him to miss numerous training sessions and putting him on a collision course with his club's management. It was to be the beginning of the end of his career at Manchester United. George started off drinking in his early 20s, and it's something he liked to do socially, but I think it also gave him that confidence to fit in with other people, because he was shy. But I think then, for George, it went into a situation where he believed he needed it; it became his social crutch. And I wonder whether this was the beginnings of his dependence on alcohol. 12.10pm, Monday the 26th of September 2005. Professor Roger Williams and Dr Akeel Alisa arrive to examine George. They have overseen his medical care for the past five years and know him well. He was really very down to earth, and he was very much someone you can get along with. The doctors begin with George's flu-like symptoms. We noted that he had evidence of fluid in his lung, and there was also evidence of infection. But their big worry is not the lung infection but how much George had been drinking in the past few months. We were very concerned that he was drinking in excess, but over the last four weeks or so before his admission, he has cut down. But we can't take that for granted. To find out more, Dr Alisa orders blood tests. The results show that George had an alarmingly high level of the enzyme gamma GT in his blood. And that confirms that in recent weeks, he's been drinking very heavily. Now, that in itself isn't life-threatening, but suddenly stopping drinking when you come into hospital can be, and that's because of the risks of the development of alcohol withdrawal syndrome. When George was drinking, the alcohol had a direct effect on his brain, altering the chemical messages in the central nervous system which control bodily function and movement. That's why after drinking, George would slur his words and stagger or fall. However, after a period of time of chronic drinking, George's brain would've adapted to the presence of alcohol. When George stops drinking abruptly, the suppressant effects of alcohol wear off, and the brain becomes overexcited, and this puts George at a very real risk of tremors, convulsions, delusions and even sudden death. George is prescribed chlordiazepoxide, a drug his doctors hope will protect him from the lethal effects of alcohol withdrawal. He's also prescribed antibiotics for his lung infection and intravenous vitamins for his weight loss. Straight away, there are drips going into him, just trying to build him back up. They were very concerned, because he was obviously a very unwell man. I just really believed that he would pull through again. But George Best will never leave the hospital alive. The big question for me is, quite simply, did he die because his body couldn't cope without alcohol? 1 10am, Tuesday the 27th of September 2005. After a night in hospital, George remains weak and bedridden. Few people know the football star has been hospitalised, and his agent, Phil Hughes, is determined to keep it that way. The press were a nightmare with him. They used to follow him round everywhere. And they knew they'd always get something juicy out of George. We didn't want the world to know that George is back in hospital with drink problems. George's drinking had been making headlines for decades. But back in Belfast, they had a terrible impact on his mother, Anne. I lie at night wondering many a time where he is, what he's doing. In the early 1970s, when George's drinking started to affect his football, his mother struggled to cope with the deluge of negative comments that followed. Anne had never drunk before, but now she too began seeking refuge in the bottle. My dad's fame put a lot of pressure on Anne, and I think that she began to drink too much because maybe she didn't know how to handle the fame my dad brought. Then in 1973, George shook the sporting world when he suddenly announced he was leaving Manchester United, his club for over 10 years. George Best, are you definitely quitting football? Yes, definitely, yeah. I made a decision, and that's it, yeah. The fans were angry with George, because they wanted him to carry on playing. I think there was disgust that he was throwing it all away. In Belfast, the pressure on George's mother, Anne, became unbearable. She couldn't cope with the public slagging him off, and she became a full-blown alcoholic. In October 1978, as a consequence of her drinking, Anne Best suffered a heart attack and died. She was 55. Her death left George heartbroken. Unfortunately, George only had one way to overcome grief, and that was to drink. So all he would do to try to get over his mum's death was drink even more, and that just accelerated his own problem with alcohol. I think when my dad lost his mom ` Jesus, that's a heavy enough thing for anyone ` then to go through it in the limelight, you know, and to think that maybe that pressure of, 'Oh, what if my fame brought that upon her?' I could imagine he must've felt pretty down. Like when I lost my dad and I turned to drink. So I think, 'Oh, he lost his mom. Then he drank even more.' The absolute tragic irony of George's mum dying of alcoholism would have heavily impacted George. He would've felt an enormous amount of guilt about that. And what did he do? He turned to the bottle even more, because it had become his way of anaesthetising himself from very difficult and painful feelings. So could George have fatally damaged his heart with alcohol, like his mother? High alcohol intake can affect the heart in a number of ways. It can cause cardiomyopathy, where the heart enlarges and can't pump properly. It can also cause arrhythmias ` that is irregular heartbeats. In both cases, this can cause heart failure, and probably explains how George's mother, Anne, died. Well, looking at his notes, there's no evidence of cardiomyopathy or arrhythmias. So George didn't die like his mother. It's been two days since George has been admitted to hospital, and now the press has found out. We did sort of sneak in, and it was all very quiet, but my phone had been hacked by one of the newspapers, and soon enough, a posse was out there waiting for us. The media are desperate to know if George has wound up in hospital as a result of his drinking. That afternoon, Phil Hughes makes a press statement, saying George Best is in hospital as a result of a lung infection. George may have been admitted to hospital with a lung infection, but he's being treated with antibiotics, so that shouldn't be a major concern. What is a big concern, however, is still the very real risk of alcohol withdrawal, which could occur any time over the next few days. And I can see from George's history that he's been through alcohol withdrawal before. Los Angeles, California, 1981. After his drinking had led him to quit Manchester United, George had continued his champagne lifestyle while playing in the North American Soccer League. For quite a while, he was a success there. He continued, however, to drink heavily, but George could play at 60% fitness there and still be a star. In LA, he met and married the model and former Playboy Bunny Angie Janes. In 1981, their son, Calum, was born. After the birth, George decided it was time to clean up his act. If he couldn't do it now, with a son to look after, he would never do it. He realised this. For the first time in his life, George sought professional help for his addiction, and he was prescribed Antabuse, an anti-drinking drug. Antabuse alters the way the liver processes alcohol. Instead of the liver breaking down alcohol into harmless by-products, it produces acetaldehyde, one of the key chemicals in the creation of hangovers. If you drink when on Antabuse, you develop symptoms such as intense headache, vomiting and flushing. At first, George was prescribed Antabuse in pill form. George took these orally for a time, but such was his lack of willpower that he would decide he was gonna have a drink, so he just wouldn't take the pills and go back for another bender. Unable to withstand the cravings that came with alcohol withdrawal, George resorted to more extreme measures. The only way to tackle this was to have the tablets sewn into his stomach. The Antabuse implants forced George to stop drinking for several months. But even though he got through the withdrawal stage, he still couldn't conquer his addiction. They were trying to help him with the Antabuse and deal with the physical dependency, but you have to deal with the psychological underlying factors, which George clearly wasn't ready for and was running away from. Two weeks in rehab failed to help George tackle his addiction. And when the Antabuse wore off, he would fall off the wagon. I remember reading a quote from his book, saying that when he had me, he couldn't stop drinking. I knew then that it was something that he couldn't stop. If having me wasn't enough, then what else is really gonna make you? George's drinking then spelt the end of his first marriage. And whilst Calum was left in LA with his mother, George returned to Britain. His footballing career was coming to a close, but George's problems with drink were far from over. ARCHIVE: George Best was found to have three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood. When arrested, he got abusive and punched a policeman in the eye. By the 1980s, George was more famous for his activities at the bar than he ever had been on the football field. In 1984, he was jailed for drink-driving. By the early '90s, George's drinking had become part and parcel of his public persona. Did you ever think when you were knocking a ball about in Belfast, did you ever think one day you'd be famous in every pub in Britain? (LAUGHTER) But despite his growing reputation as a drunk, George could still turn on the charm. In 1994, Alex Pursey, an air stewardess 26 years his junior, fell under his spell. He's lovely-looking. Really gorgeous. Bright blue eyes. And he was a really, really down-to-earth, nice, kind, funny guy. The couple married the following year, and Alex soon got to see how deeply ingrained George's addiction had become. It's funny, cos George would never drink at home. He never had any alcohol in his house. (KNOCK AT DOOR) 10 o'clock in the morning, he would be in the pub. (KNOCK AT DOOR) And the pub would open up for him. Morning. And he would be drinking white wine. Usual? And he'd be there till closing. I used to think, 'Holy shit.' And that was a continual cycle every single day. And that's when I knew that it was, like, a serious problem. 1 Although George Best was admitted to hospital with a lung infection, his doctors had been anxiously looking out for the signs of alcohol withdrawal. After three days in hospital, George hasn't shown any significant signs or symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. So I can only conclude that his death wasn't due to alcohol withdrawal. 12.45am, Tuesday the 3rd of October 2005. After seven days in hospital, George's lung infection is still showing no signs of improvement. He started to get a lot worse. And all the medicines they'd given him didn't seem to be helping any. So far, the doctors have tried three types of antibiotics, but none of them have had any impact. We had to establish why is the infection not getting better. We were also concerned that he may be developing signs of the infection spreading. That was when we decided that he ought to go to intensive care. In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Phil breaks the news to George's son Calum. Phil called me, crying, said, 'Your dad's been rushed into the Intensive Care Unit.' And we hadn't been there yet. It was scary. The infection has spread from his lungs to other organs now, including the kidneys and the bloodstream, causing septicaemia. So a perfect storm of infection is brewing, affecting his whole body. George Best has been in Intensive Care since just after midnight. His son Calum is at his bedside. George is drifting in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he would be asleep, and I would just sit there and wait for him to wake up. He'd look over. I'd look at him. A little nod, back to sleep. So I sat there with him. Just this room and my dad in this room was really, really, really overwhelming. George now faces a life-threatening situation. If the doctors can't bring the infection ravaging his body under control, his vital organs will fail, and George will die. (DRAMATIC MUSIC) George suddenly surprises his doctors ` he's sitting up and talking to his son Calum. So I sat there with him, and he was in the hospital bed, and he's going, 'Besty, don't worry, Don't worry. This is fixable. They'll get me some Wine Gums,' and I'm like, '(CHUCKLES) It needs to be Wine Gums? What?' The reason that George is feeling better is that his doctors have got his infection under control, with a complex combination if drugs, including antifungal and antibacterial medication. With the drugs seeming to hold the infection at bay, Calum spends the next 10 days with his dad, whiling away the hours watching George's favourite quiz shows. I just wanted to be there, you know, at 24 years old, feeling like a kid. You know, feeling like a young kid that just wanted to be there with his dad. But George's doctors are concerned the drugs have not defeated the infection. And on the 22nd of October, George suffers a life-threatening setback ` he develops severe internal bleeding. He's diagnosed with a condition called coagulopathy. That means his blood isn't clotting properly. And this can be a sign of severe liver damage. As well as producing the proteins to make blood clot, the liver serves over 500 other functions vital to life, including processing toxic drugs like alcohol. But too much alcohol can overwhelm the liver and ultimately cause it to fail. I can see from his history that, in the past, George's liver function has been much worse, and I can also see that he's had these potentially fatal symptoms, and he's survived. June 1999. Chelsea, West London. Morning, darling. The effects of 30 years of drinking were beginning to take a toll on George's body. There was a few things with George's health that were raising alarm bells. He did get the shakes, and his cure was to have a top-up. His breakfast was a glass of wine. George knew his shaking was a result of the early stages of alcohol withdrawal, and for years his cure had been to go to the pub. But as the millennium approached, it became harder and harder for George to ignore the warning signs that his liver was beginning to fail. He had a little scab on his leg. He'd just picked it, and he said, 'Oh my God, Alex. Come here.' And I went. He said, 'It's just not stopping bleeding,' and it just bled and bled and bled and bled all day. He knew exactly what was happening, that it was his liver. I just think he didn't want to accept the facts. George was beginning to become iller and iller and iller and couldn't keep anything down. (VOMITS) Yeah, I do remember him throwing up blood. And I remember him throwing up all over the place. All of a sudden he'd just be fine, and then he'd just be sick. Yet even this wasn't enough to stop him going back to the pub. George became the definition of the chronic alcoholic. He had lost control. He was a slave to his cravings. This was someone who was compulsively doing something that was actually killing him. April 2000. Chelsea, West London. George's liver could not take his constant drinking any longer. (GEORGE SPLUTTERS) He was in so much pain. He couldn't bend down to put his socks on. (GEORGE WHIMPERS) It was horrible. In the end, he was rolling around the bed in agony. (GEORGE SOBS) And I just thought, 'I can't just sit back and watch this happen.' So I phoned 999. George was rushed to A & E. (GEORGE SOBS) After tests, he was referred to the private Cromwell Hospital to see liver specialist Professor Roger Williams. He told George his best hope of survival would be a liver transplant. (DRAMATIC MUSIC, TICKING) For the first time in decades, George couldn't spend his days in the pub. All he could do was wait for a suitable liver to be donated. It was kind of like waiting for a baby to arrive. (CHUCKLES) It could have been any day, any time, you know. Two weeks, three weeks, three months. You were waiting for the pagers to go off all the time. Eventually, after two and a half years, George got the call he'd been waiting for. And on the 30th of July 2002, he awoke from a nine-hour operation with a new liver ` and seemingly as a new man. I remember he came to, and he says, 'Son, I'm sorry. Things are gonna change now.' And I remember that point. It was thrilling, exciting. So he's got a new liver, and you're thinking, 'There's a whole new chance here.' But by 2005, that new liver is showing signs of failure. So why is it failing? It was only transplanted three years earlier. Is it possible that George has destroyed his new liver in the same way as he destroyed his old liver? By excessive alcohol intake. 1 Corfu, Greece, 2002. George was recovering from his liver transplant, and he invited his son Calum to join him on holiday. This is what I've been waiting for ` to share these times and these emotions with my dad. And him being happy to share 'em with me. So we're there for two or three days, and everything about the situation is beautiful. My dad was sober; everything was good. And I remember going downstairs, and I stick my head around the kitchen door, and I see my dad swigging, backing to the door, closing the door. So I've come in the kitchen this way, and I've opened it, and I've looked, and it's a bottle of wine. And the bottle of wine was open, and I'm thinking to myself, 'Oh my God,' you know. 'He's drinking again.' And I was devastated. Drinking rapidly became the most important thing again in George's life. And his addiction pushed his marriage almost to breaking point. I went mad at him. And I said, 'You've gotta sort yourself out, look after yourself. 'I can't stand there and watch you kill yourself.' Deep down, I knew that he would... keep drinking after the transplant. In the pub, there was no shortage of people who still wanted to buy George Best a drink. Still to this day, people want to buy me a drink cos I'm Besty's kid, you know what I mean? So I get the extent of how many people wanted to share a drink with George Best, and you know, my dad must have had a lot of drinks (CHUCKLES) because there's so many people that tell me that they had a drink with him. Alex tried everything she could to stop George destroying his new liver. I went down to the pub on so many occasions and tried to pull him out. I'd speak to every single pub landlord in the area and say, 'Please don't serve him. Do you realise you're killing him?' It got very, very fraught towards the end. I mean, we were not getting on at all. I was getting so frustrated. You know, you're watching somebody die in front of you, and they're not doing anything about it. Finally Alex could take it no more, and in 2004 the couple divorced. 9pm, 17th November 2005. For the past three and a half weeks, George Best has remained critically ill and has been drifting in and out of consciousness. I remember walking in to the Intensive Care,... and it's night-time. I think it's, like, 9pm, and my dad's there, and he's in the bed, and I just remember he looked at me, and he went, 'You know, Besty?' And I went, 'What?' He said, 'They had a party in here last night.' (DISTORTED MUSIC) George has started hallucinating. He's convinced his doctors and nurses have been partying in his room. I've gone, 'What are you talking about?' And I'm just freaking out, going, 'What is my dad talking about?' George has hepatic encephalopathy, and this is a sign that his already-damaged liver has deteriorated further and is unable to clear toxins, which are now affecting his brain and giving him very vivid hallucinations. The party in George's head seems all too real. He asks his agent, Phil Hughes, to do something about it. I did smile, because I said, 'George, you normally would've been joining them, 'not telling me to make them stop.' He said, 'No. Hughesy, they've gotta stop.' He said, 'You've gotta make 'em stop.' Walked out the room, came back five minutes later, and I said, 'They've gone now.' He said, 'Thank you.' It's now become apparent to George's doctors why his transplanted liver is failing. For alcoholics, such as George, who continue drinking after their transplant, it's incredibly risky, but it doesn't necessarily mean the new liver will go the same way as the old liver. In George's case, the liver is failing not because of drinking, but because of infection. 8am, 18th November 2005. Overnight, the infection has a catastrophic effect on George's condition, and he has to be sedated. The infection has overwhelmed his body. His vital organs are starting to fail. George is now dependent on life support to remain alive. Phil's crying down the phone, and Phil's saying, 'It's just turned for the worse.' The medication is seriously not working, and they're running out of options of what to do to fix the problem my dad has. Over the past two months, George's doctors have tried every antibiotic to try and combat the infection but without success. There is one last hope. Since his transplant, George has been on immunosuppressant drugs to try and prevent his body rejecting the new liver. The doctors stop those drugs in order to try and let his own immune system fight the infection. But it's a desperate gamble. 3pm, the 24th of November 2005. George Best remains on life support. He;s been sedated for almost a week. Stopping the immunosuppressive drugs has made no difference, and his doctors now realise there is nothing more they can do for George. It was very hard to watch George... getting worse by the day. And it was very painful to know that you have the expectations of his family. You have the expectation of the country, and suddenly realising that you may lose your patient but also a friend. 1 George's family and closest friends gather round his bedside. The doctors explain that with no hope of recovery, there is only one choice left. We've spent all this time here trying to get you better, all these years, all this hope that I'd had, and it had all just kind of come to this last minute of this doctor saying, 'There's nothing more we can do. We have to end it.' At 7.55pm, the life support is switched off. Having been taken off life support and being sedated to keep him comfortable, within a matter of hours George will die. You still don't want to grasp that fact. It's still fixable. Dad always pulled through. And you'd look at him, and there'd be all the beeps and the tubes and the intravenous, and everything was just so drastically sad. Dr Akeel, I remember him checking George's heartbeat, and he just said, 'This is it. It's time.' (EXHALES SHARPLY, SNIFFLES) So, uh,... we all just kind of looked at each other. You know, and then, uh,... VOICE BREAKS: ...my dad passed away. (SOMBRE VIOLIN MUSIC) And it was a sad time. It was pretty brutal. ARCHIVE: I wanna talk today. My father has passed away. Not only have I lost my dad, but we've all lost a wonderful man. George Best was... probably the most naturally gifted footballer of his generation, one of the greatest footballers the UK has ever produced. NEWSREADER: The Belfast boy who came to Manchester United with magic in his feet and a self-destruct button in his soul passed away quietly today. His was a life of bright talent darkened by drink. There was an overwhelming surge of love and affection for George Best when he died. People felt sorry for him because it was a disease, an addiction. He couldn't help himself. When he started drinking again after the liver transplant, they thought, 'How sad. He's had two chances, really, and he's blown 'em both.' At the time, the overwhelming consensus was that George Best must have died as result of drinking after his liver transplant. But this sits at odds with his death certificate, and Dr Jason Payne-James has been trying to work out exactly how the footballing legend died. There's no doubt, looking at his medical history, that alcohol had a dramatic impact on George Best's health throughout his life, and yet there's no mention of it on his death certificate. I can see here amongst the multiple causes of death ` pneumonia and septicaemia, multiorgan failure, all of which relate to the lung infection which he was admitted to hospital with. The question in my mind is why did a simple lung infection have such catastrophic consequences for George? Is it possible that for the past 10 years the public and media have got it wrong, and George Best did not die as a result of his drinking? When he passed away in 2005, there was little doubt in the public's mind that George Best had died as a result of his drinking. But it didn't diminish the great outpouring of love and respect that followed as his funeral cortege left his childhood home in East Belfast. The funeral was a proud moment. What a proper sending off that was. I just remember the streets being lined with people, thinking, 'Wow, this is all for my dad. I wonder if he even knew the impact he had on people's lives.' 100,000 people came out to watch the funeral procession make its way to Stormont, the seat of government in Northern Ireland. The funeral was absolutely amazing. You know, the people of Ireland and the Irish government, what a send-off they gave George, you know. It was fit for any king. George was laid to rest in the Roselawn Cemetery, in a plot beside his mother Ann. Yet despite his lifelong addiction, George Best's death certificate makes no reference to his alcoholism. Now Dr Payne-James believes he has unravelled the mystery surrounding George's death. When George was first admitted to hospital on the 26th of September, he was diagnosed with a lung infection. Yet no matter how many antibiotics his doctors tried, they couldn't get the infection under control. By the time George went into Intensive Care on the 3rd of October, his lung infection had worsened to become pneumonia, and the infection had entered his blood, causing septicaemia. Both of which are here on his death certificate. I want to understand ` how did this happen? I can see here on the death certificate that it also states 'immunosuppression following liver transplant', and this helps clarify to me what really happened and how George Best died from a lung infection. Since his liver transplant in 2002, George had to take immunosuppressive drugs every day to stop his body rejecting the new organ. Dr Payne-James believes these drugs played a key role in George Best's death. George had told his doctors that in the months leading up to his admission he'd been drinking heavily. The alcohol had clouded his judgement, and he'd overdosed on his immunosuppressant medication. Not only that, because he was drinking so heavily, he wasn't eating or sleeping properly. And the combination of these factors have a devastating effect on George's immune system. It's not just suppressed; it's virtually switched off completely. With no functioning immune system, George's body was left with little defence against infection. When he developed a chest infection, there was nothing to stop it spreading throughout his body. By the time George was taken off life support, the infection had quite simply overwhelmed all his vital organs ` his lungs, his kidneys, his liver, his heart and his brain. None of them could perform their individual functions necessary to sustain life. And this is why multiorgan failure is on his death certificate. But having examined all the evidence, Dr Payne-James is convinced alcohol inevitably played a significant part in George Best's death. If George hadn't been a drinker, he wouldn't have developed liver failure, and he wouldn't have needed a liver transplant. And the whole sequence of events we've heard about would never have happened. Ultimately, the lesson we can learn from George Best's tragic death is that alcoholism isn't a weakness; it's a disease, and it's one that even with the best treatment and support in the world can still take your life. GEORGE: Well, I know what they will think. They'll forget all the rubbish when I've gone, (CHUCKLES) and they'll remember the football. COMMENTATOR: Yes, it must be for George Best! (CHEERING) People say, 'Never meet your heroes; you'll be disappointed.' I certainly wasn't. He was a fantastic man. ALEX: I loved him. I really loved him. He was so witty, super intelligent, lovable rogue. I don't know any person in the whole world that would get away with what he got away with. You know, when you start hearing quotes like, 'I gave up booze in 1979. 'It was the worst 20 minutes of my life,' I can laugh about it, but then the dark side of it is, like, 'Damn, I lost my dad to drink. I lost my dad to some of these funny stories.' The best footballer and no one better at pulling a bird. (CHUCKLES) God bless him.