Which is saying a great deal because, first, the tabloid/Hello! magazine culture was less evolved in those days; second, Best had much stiffer competition. Like Mick Jagger, or John Lennon, or even Tom Jones.Beckham misses training because he has stayed up all night looking after his baby. Best missed training because he stayed up all night attending to Miss World in Marbella. If the teetotalling paterfamilias who captains England these days stopped conjuring up silly haircuts or pouring soy sauce over his face, his status might very rapidly dwindle to that of an unusually able footballer – such as Rivaldo, say, or Zidane – whose off-field activities do not stir the interest of anyone. Beckham is married to a pop singer, which helps, but her star is fading and the longer they remain happily married the greater the risk that one day it will dawn on the tabloid editors that, actually, there is nothing there.Best has never ceased to provide the sensation-seeking press with honest-to-goodness red meat. There was no need in the old days for a man who purported to have bedded seven women in one night, and regularly bedded seven in one week, to change his hairstyle in order to excite the interest of the Mail or the Sun. Today when he gets on the front pages again it is not because he is pretending to have had his head sliced open with a tomahawk, it is because he really is very close indeed to dying.

Death, in his case, by a thousand vodkas.To glimpse him now on camera in an unguarded moment, to see the real Best, is not thrilling, much less is it titillating It is a vision of a man who is heartbreakingly washed up. The pathos is made all the greater by the knowledge that in order for his liver not to give in altogether, the way his right knee once did, he has had anti-booze implants placed under the skin of his stomach. The way they work is that in the event of his succumbing to his eternal temptation, he will become violently ill.It is a weak man, it is a sad man, who needs chemicals to compensate for his lack of self-control. Best would not come across as quite so sad and weak were it not for the fact that in his day he had been such a titan. To be truly tragic you need first to have been an heroic great.Rodney Marsh, his team-mate on Sky, reckons in an interview in tomorrow's documentary that his old team-mate at Fulham was "the greatest footballer who ever played the game".

Such a judgement will always be debated yet in this case it is not wildly off the mark. No one is going to laugh Marsh off the park for believing Best was better than Pele, Cruyff, Maradona or di Stefano.No one who saw him play could dispute, at any rate, Marsh's assessment of his merits. "He was the quickest, the strongest, he could tackle, he could shoot with both feet, he could pass, he could head, he was brave, he had a great engine and he scored millions of goals."Marsh leaves one thing out from his list: Best's speed and balance was such that he could dribble around a defender, or a goalkeeper, better than anyone before or since. Which is why Barry Fry, who played alongside him when he was in the Manchester United youth teams, makes the point that when Best got the ball you could not help yourself from getting excited, you found yourself shifting reflexively to the edge of your seat.Cantona, sure, had the same effect on spectactors But, like Beckham, only some of the time. Best made the adrenalin race, unfailingly, every single time the ball arrived at his feet. He had the charisma of Cantona and, as millions of women would testify, the beauty of Beckham. But as a player he had a genius that none of the pretenders that followed him have come close to possessing..

Andrew Coltart will take a three-shot lead into the final round of the Great North Open at Slaley Hall as he chases only his second European Tour title. Andrew Coltart will take a three-shot lead into the final round of the Great North Open at Slaley Hall as he chases only his second European Tour title. The Scot carded a third-round 69 at Slaley Hall for an 11-under-par total of 205 and admitted he would be disappointed not to claim the £133,330 first prize today. "There are a lot of guys capable of shooting great scores but I would be disappointed not to win, that's only natural," said Coltart, who leads Wales' Bradley Dredge and England's Jamie Spence by three, with five more players another shot back. "I have a good chance and if I can keep doing the job I'm doing it's going to make it difficult for someone else," he added. Coltart had shared the overnight lead on eight under after consecutive rounds of 68 and was never headed once playing partner Dredge bogeyed the second hole after failing to get up and down from left of the green.Dredge, seeking his first career victory, did get back on level terms with an eagle on the fourth while Coltart two-putted for birdie, but the Scot then pulled clear with birdies from eight and 20 feet on the fifth and seventh. Another birdie on the 11th stretched Coltart's lead to three and that remained intact despite his only bogey of the day, when he three-putted the 15th."I played reasonably well and managed to hole some putts and that's what is going to make the difference," added Coltart, who was one of Mark James' wild cards for the 1999 Ryder Cup and lost to Tiger Woods in the closing-day singles. Coltart's putting has been a major reason he has not fulfilled the potential initially shown with the first of two Australian PGA victories in 1994 and confirmed with his maiden European Tour win in the Qatar Masters in 1998.Installing a putting green in the back garden of his home in Sunningdale has certainly helped, however He said: "That has certainly made a difference.