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