Fans salute George Best's return to match fitness

Football fans world-wide are tonight roaming the streets waving scarves in celebration of the return to form of soccer legend George Best who has just played his first away match in three years.

The fixture — hosted by the Chequers pub, Surrey — saw Best recapture some of the dazzling form which once carried the player to the very top of the alcoholic celebrity Premiership.

It appears that Best has fully recovered from the terrible liver injury that at one point put threatened to put him out of the drinking business for good. Indeed, so spectacular has been his return to the top flight that he even managed a lively assault on a press photographer after sinking a few "liveners".

"Tremendous, fantastic," said the landlord of the Chequers who witnessed the entire spectacle. "George really gave it one-hundred-and-ten per cent. Me and the customers are over the moon."

This enthusiasm was echoed by the surgical team who gave Best a second bite of the cherry by transplanting a donated liver into the booze-ravaged body of the Northern Irish wizard. "It's just great to see him back in action," one scrub told The Rockall Times. "It makes all the time and expense worthwhile to see a former patient living life to the full."

Indeed, the promise of further entertaining binges to come has effectively silenced those who claimed that Best's new organ might have been given to a more deserving recipient.

There is, however, one dissenting voice amid the roar of the crowd: that of Best's wife Alex. Her agent told assembled hacks that she was "absolutely furious" with the pub for serving her husband alcohol, adding: "Pubs have no business selling alcohol to people anyway".

Meanwhile, teams of obituary writers are standing by in a state of instant readiness in case Best decides to "give it the full saloon bar 90 minutes", as one sports pundit put it this morning.