The morning after the nation had endured watching Manchester City play Arsenal in that slow-motion travesty of a match the other Sunday, Alan Hudson sent me a photograph.
It was a picture of George Best topless as he went through his pre-season paces at Manchester United’s sparse old training ground, the Cliff, in Salford.
Best looked as fit, lean, sharp, focused, lithe, strong and balanced as one of the greatest footballers in the world should be. Arguably at the time actually the greatest.
‘Here’s that drunken, womanising layabout in the process of p****** his career up the wall,’ said Hudson, the Chelsea idol, with sardonic tongue in cheek, since he, too, had been accused of failing to fulfil his magical talent because of his sybaritic Kings Road lifestyle.