Babysitting George
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
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'Celia Walden's memoir of George Best near the end of his life is a beautiful portrait of genius in tragic, terminal decline' - Tony Parsons
'Funny, affectionate and tragically sad by turns, and the book actually sheds new light on the ex-footballer' - Independent
'A touching insight into George Best the man - and the media circus that made him' - Economist
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A unique and moving memoir of a young journalist's summer in the company of George Best, in the year before he died
August, 2003. Celia Walden, a young reporter, receives an unusual phone call from her editor. She is to drop everything and fly to Malta in an attempt to track down a legendary footballer and keep him from the press. George Best, an alcoholic with his personal life in chaos, isn't, however, the easiest man to find. But the unlikely friendship that develops between George and Celia reveals an intelligent and complex human being.
Babysitting George is a tender account of a unique relationship between a young woman and a dying star, which questions the exploitative nature of fame and tabloid journalism, the horrors of addiction and the humane, implausible friendships that can change one's life forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An inadequate account by a British journalist and novelist (Harm's Way) tracks the legendary ailing Manchester United footballer through bars and hotel rooms one summer two years before he died. In July 2003 Walden, then a rookie reporter at a London tabloid, was sent to the Crowne Plaza hotel in Sliema, Malta, to find the notorious former athlete, womanizer, and now very alcoholic George Best, who had been contracted to write a column for the paper but had gone on a wild bender, alienating his second wife, Alex, and threatening to talk to other newspapers. Walden found the diminished star drinking wine spritzers alone at the English pub behind the hotel, and gradually ingratiated herself into his company, without drinking or sleeping with him. (A concluding photo shows Walden, then a lithe blonde in her early 20s, with Best towering over the elfin footballer.) At this point Best was still reeling from a recent liver transplant, stuffed with prescription pills, including Antabuse, which made him ill after drinking alcohol, and given to maudlin musings on fame and failure while being chased by opportunists and sycophants. Walden, perhaps due to her youth, asked only superficial questions of the sadly aging star, and never grasped a sense of his great climb to godlike heights and cataclysmic fall from grace.
