"I often went missing - Miss World, Miss England, Miss Wales..."
From the back streets of Belfast he emerged, the most complete footballing talent these islands ever produced. For a too-brief spell in the 1960s his talent lit up the world, burning with a phosphorescent glow in an era when our football was in the age of black and white.
But the chaos, the emptiness and the bleak nihilism of Best's later years were summed up in an anecdote he liked to tell himself. It is the one were the playboy is lounging on a hotel bed with one or other of the Miss Worlds he took up with from time to time. Spent Champagne bottles litter the suite, and there is an overflowing pile of banknotes in a drawer. A little old Belfast guy comes in with room service and sighs, "Oh Mr Best - where did it all go wrong?"
But in the decade he was a pro for Manchester United he won the European Cup and two Championships, scoring 178 goals in 466 games for United along the way. Not a bad haul for an under-achieving wastrel. Best never asked for pity. For years he had known how his life would end, and he did not invite sympathy. There are enough quotes in this book about drinking and alcoholism to show that Best was aware of his fate. He did not embrace it, but neither did he evade it.