Connect: Today George Best will be buried. Tens, reportedly even hundreds of thousands, will attend his funeral in Belfast. Most of those won't remember the mid-1960s to the early 1970s when Best was in his footballing pomp. For them the funeral may be vicariously sad but it will be primarily memorable as an "I was there" event with which to regale succeeding generations.
Still, the celebrity circus notwithstanding, some funeral-goers will remember Best's glory days. They will mourn part of their own youth, for this is very much an "ask not for whom the bell tolls" funeral. We know it tolls for all of us who saw Best in his prime. Like the deaths of John Lennon and George Harrison, the death of the so-called "fifth Beatle" represents a rupture with the past.
Indeed, there are only two of the five - if you accept that "fifth Beatle" description of Best - left living. The 1960s - the 20th century's party - are slipping inexorably into the quicksand of history. Its icons who died young - Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, for instance - all abused drink and drugs, especially drink. Best did well to make it to 59.
He's not the first supremely gifted footballer to die from addiction to alcohol. Garrincha, the Brazilian winger, who won World Cups in 1958 and 1962, died a penniless street alcoholic in 1983. He was only 49. Like Best, he had worn a number seven shirt and was a serial debauchee who many fans claim was a better player than Pele. Like Best, he too had a gigantic funeral.
Mind you, although he had a scandalous affair with a singer and fathered at least 14 children by different women, Garrincha was not as handsome as Best. Still, his headstone describes him as the "Joy of the People" and Best has been that too.
Indeed the people's joy seems in direct proportion to his self-loathing. Sentimentality will fade, but Best will likely remain a joy of the people.
He will remain so despite available footage not doing him justice. His performance away to Chelsea in 1964, for instance, when aged 18 (though he looked 15) and weighing about nine stone, is legendary.
No film of it exists, but although table-topping Chelsea were hitherto unbeaten at home, even their fans gave magical Best a standing ovation after Manchester United's 2-0 win.
He will remain so also because ultimately it's questionable if Best's life should be envied. The ability, the looks, the adulation, the Miss Worlds, the models, the actresses and all the rest of it seem impossibly seductive. But would you take, say, eight years at professional football's peak for four times as long as a chronic alcoholic: jail, hospitals, family bust-ups, penury, misery?
There are, of course, thousands of alcoholics who get the jail, hospitals, family bust-ups, penury and misery without ever having the fame, adulation and Miss Worlds. Such people can justly envy Best. But Joe Soap, anonymous, non-alcoholic Joe Soap with his ups and downs, wins and losses, small comedies and small tragedies - would he really swap his life for Best's? Should he? Who knows? Presumably, younger people - those who don't remember Best in his pomp - would swap their perceived drudgery for the beguiling glamour of it all. Ironically, those who do remember George Best have probably lived long enough to recognise that the price he's paid has been horrific.
Best's finest football years were mostly between 35 and 40 years ago. A period comparably distant from then as it is from today would include Huddersfield (1924-6) and Arsenal (1933-5) winning three League championships in a row and Dixie Dean's record 60 League goals for title-winning Everton in 1927-8. For almost all the period Manchester City was the top team in Manchester.
The point is that Best's heyday was quite some time ago. His passing, it's argued, has received excessive coverage because the media big wigs who decide the news agenda are still men formed by the 1960s. Perhaps that's true, but in an age when big Premiership athletes of marked effectiveness but woefully limited footballing skill make fortunes, Best represents other values.
He certainly represents other values than those espoused this week on RTÉ's Questions & Answers by Bank of Ireland's chief economist Dan McLaughlin and Magill editor Eamon Delaney. In his attempted defence of the management of Irish Ferries, McLaughlin was arrogant, and, in condemning Best as simply a wife-beating drunk, Delaney was ignorant. Dreadful stuff, really.
Anyway, there may be a reaction to today's funeral like that which typified the aftermath to Diana Spencer's sad obsequies. It's unlikely, however, because all that idiotic "queen of hearts" and "people's princess" nonsense was sure to embarrass all concerned. Best, at least, though most of his finest moments are confined to memory, had genius.
I can still see a photograph of him in a 1965 soccer annual. He's got the Beatle haircut, a flash car and a big smile. His eyes, however, look sad, as though he knew that life wouldn't always be a vacuous PR shoot. It never is. Goodbye George Best.