Best:His Mother's Son

BBC Two, 9pm, Sunday April 26th

Michelle Fairley played the mother of football legend George Best in this provoking drama. In just 10 years, Ann Best slid from teetotal mother to 'nasty drunk'.

Supported by Tom Payne as George with Lorcan Cranitch as Dickie, George's father, the fact based drama illustrate's the downward slide of both mother and son. George himself went from goal scoring superstar at the age of 19 to retired by 27.

According the The Times Playlist, it is unclear why Ann Best 'hit the bottle' but Fairley herself said:

'She was a very private woman, very shy and she just couldn't stand the press scrutiny. Drinking was her way of numbing herself and of dealing with all the pressures.'

Indeed, during the course of the film, Ann and her daughters were subject to taunts, sneers and spiteful comments from people they met in public. The constant hounding of the family by doorstepping newspaper reporters clearly added to the family's stress.

The hurt and pain in the family came across very palpably. The loyalty demonstrated by Dickie Best was both touching and moving.

Ann Best was an ordinary Belfast mother living in extraordinary circumstances that any amount of life experience would never had prepared her for. To family, George was just doing the job he loved and they expected to carry on with their lives as they always had, in the safety of their terraced home. Public figures, it seems, can too readily become public property and George Best became Belfast's 'own son'.

The interior of the Best's house would have looked remarkably familiar to anyone who grew up in the 1960's. It is the ordinariness of the people, their homes and surroundings that drew out the sharpest contrasts to the family's unnatural and unwelcome attention.

Best:His Mother's Son would be worth seeing again on iplayer.

Very sobering.

Anyone concerned about their own alcohol consumption or that of anyone close to them, can find information and support from BBC Headroom or by checking out some of these links.

The national telephone number for Alcoholics Anonymous is 0845 76 97 555.

http://www.aa-uk.org.uk/

http://www.dryoutnow.com/?utm_medium=google/ppc&utm_campaign=DryOutNow_Base_campaign&utm_adgroup=A-A&utm_term=alcoholics%20anonymous&gclid=CL_ovseek5oCFQE0xgodsD1YMQ

http://www.bbc.co.uk/headroom/newsandevents/programmes/george_best.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/tv/2009/wk17/unplaced.shtml

in response to a story in Sheffield Star, April 16th, 2009

I don’t do empathy willingly but there was something in the story that cut me right up. The writer, whoever he was, told of a micro moment in his life. How a woman he had never met before and would probably never meet again, offered him her telephone. He did not use the words trancelike, but his writing evoked such emotion that its state was obvious. His story, in the Sheffield Star of April 16th, 2009, told of the woman, who reminded him so much of his own mum, across the Pennines, who would have heard the news that day. How Liverpool football fans had been crushed against riot prevention fencing and had been injured or died for their passion.

The house he was ushered into reminded him of his own, even the cardigan the woman wore was reminiscent of that worn by his mum when she pegged out the washing in the cold. His language was not that of a writer, but its earthiness was all the better for it. It was real, unlike the often detached reporting of an experienced journalist. A journalist would have written a helicopter passenger view of the unfolding tragedy; from the air and remote. His bird’s eye view would have unfolded a perspective very different from the one this guy wrote about. This football fan had gone along to the FA Cup semi-final between his home team of Liverpool with rivals Nottingham Forest from a ‘ground up’ angle. He had been there, in the crowd, witnessed the unfolding disaster, the tardiness of the police to react, who themselves had been conditioned to view pitch invasions as hostile, fights as part of the ‘game’ and had been slow in their realisation that this pitch invasion was different. These were not hooligans, but ordinary people, regular fans, trying to escape the suffocating crush of too many too quickly herded in to the cattle pen terraces, to the death of 96 people and injury of hundreds more.

I knew, as I read this man’s story, that had I been the woman whose telephone he used, I would have done the same. Football may not be my life, but I have children and loved ones. It was not difficult to flip the camera round and be the mum at home, listening to the match; feeling helpless, knowing it was my lad and his mates who had set off for Sheffield that morning with their spirits as high as the scarves that trailed from the back windows of the car. Not many people had mobile phones in 1989 and calling home took longer, the wait slower. I could have been the mum waiting in agony for the call that said, ‘Mum, it’s me, we’re alright.’ I certainly would have been the Sheffield mother in the cardigan, pulling that young lad into my house so he could call home.

Maybe you don’t have to ‘do’ empathy. Sometimes it ‘does’ you because we have all been there, seen stuff and needed a bit of a helping hand along the way, even from strangers. And if it helps someone else along the way, then so be it.

Electrodes, eye balls and autism research

It is intriguing how researchers are so fascinated by the autistic personality. How our minds work, how retinas react to light, how daily ‘feelings’ differ, how we appreciate music. Brains have been fMRI[i] scanned, language studied, stress levels measured. The stuff of cold war sci-fi movies indeed. If you don’t understand it, take it apart and try to make sense of it.

There is sometimes no purpose to the research other than to prove a theory. It is not necessarily designed to help people on the autism spectrum, their friends or families. Nor is it with an aim to design better support or help the diagnostic progress. It seems that research is often done simply because the subject matter is so interesting. Sometimes, too, because the savant skills demonstrated in the minority of people on the autism spectrum are coveted and replication in the typically developed (TD) person is highly sought after. Science desires the production of its master race.

Welcome to the world of the lab rat.

I recently visited City University, London, to see ophthalmologist Dr Paul Constable. I had my retina measured while looking into rapidly flashing lights. Although the drops made my eyeball numb, the electrode on it still got a bit uncomfortable. Waiting in the dark for the drops to take effect gave us opportunity to discuss Paul’s research and the reason for it. Retinas in autistic people react differently to light from those of ‘normal’ people. He said, “Indeed some people with autism have different retinal responses, some are normal and others are low, but this only occurs in ~ 30% of people. I think this is because the same chemicals that work in the brain also work in the retina, and in autism these chemicals are in an imbalance, hence the different behaviour patterns.” It might explain why many people on the autism spectrum are sensitive to certain kinds of lighting.

Rory Allen, a PhD student at Goldsmith’s College in London is researching music and autism. As music has meant so much to me over my lifetime, I was very keen to take part. According to the information sheet:

Research suggests that people with an autism spectrum condition enjoy music in the same ways as people without the condition, but that they may describe their reactions to it differently. The purpose of this study is to check whether this assumption is true or not.

It seems that people with autism experience very strong emotions when listening to music.
Rory’s tests involved attaching electrodes the second and fourth finger of a subject and measuring responses to music played through headphones. The first test was a piece of music chosen by the subject. Subsequent tests involved listening to 30 second classical sound clips as stand alone pieces or whilst looking at happy and sad faces on the computer. Hit the space bar to continue to the next image.

Another part of the tests, minus electrodes was to have a sheet of paper upon which were boxes with ‘bundles’ of words on them. For instance, bundle five words were lively, dancing, energised, upbeat, adventurous, exuberant.

The aim was to listen to a sound clip and choose from one of the boxes which set was most accurate. When I did this, we got into quite a complicated debate over the word ‘emotion’. How could I explain that my response was unemotional? I picked the bundle that closely matched the words that the music evoked. A clip might sound happy, sad, lonely, bright or cheerful. The clips evoked words rather than an emotion for me. Hence my reply was, ‘This music sounds like box (n)’.
It did not mean I experienced that emotion. Perhaps he was overlooking my emotional attachment to music. With these clips, I had none. With my own choice, I had plenty.

I take part in these tests as a volunteer, receiving travel expenses and, occasionally payment. But that is not why I do it. Knowing I am helping students gain their doctorates, develop understanding and awareness while learning about myself and my own autism is very satisfying. Having grown up when little was known about autism and virtually nothing about Asperger’s syndrome, it is easy to appreciate the importance of earlier diagnosis and appropriate treatment. It challenges prejudices and misconceptions. Autism is not a mental illness but being misunderstood can, and does, lead to mental health problems such as depression and suicidal tendencies. Parents will continue to have their children labelled ‘naughty’ because Asperger’s syndrome has not been considered. If people like me don’t get out there and help researchers, they have nothing to work on but assumptions, which can be very wide of the mark and leave this beautiful race of people in an unnecessary cycle of hurt.

http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/gosh/clinicalservices/Ophthalmology/Custom%20Menu_01
http://www.city.ac.uk/optometry/about/staff/constable.html
http://psychology.uwo.ca/fmri4newbies
[i] Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

see also:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123484.php

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-188796109.html

This one is interesting, especially as this person uses the same blogger background as me:

http://thequirkylayman.blogspot.com/