Best banned for drink driving
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Soccer legend George Best was fined and banned from driving for 20 months on Monday after pleading guilty to a drink-driving charge.
The former Manchester United great was found to be two-and-a-half times over the legal alcohol limit when he was arrested in the early hours of last Friday in Merton, southwest London.
Best, 57, who underwent a liver transplant in July 2002 after years of alcohol abuse, had rowed with his son in a restaurant and had been on his way to a health farm for treatment when he was stopped, his lawyer told Wimbledon magistrates' court.
"Alcoholism is disease. He has struggled with it and at times he has had it under control," Best's lawyer Pippa McAusey said. "Unfortunately he has slumped back... and he has lost the support of his wife."
In addition to the driving ban, which could be reduced if Best agrees to attend a rehabilitation course, he was fined 1,500 pounds ($2,734).
"It was irresponsible and unacceptable behaviour," magistrate Sally Marley told him.
The smartly dressed Best said nothing as he hurried away from court. Earlier McAusey had said he would have called his driver on the night in question but he had been on holiday.
She told the court he had not been driving erratically nor committing any other offence but was stopped because he had a personalised number plate which made him stick out "like a sore thumb."
Best, a former Northern Ireland international and European Footballer of the Year in 1968, is one of the most gifted players ever to grace the game and was part of the Manchester United side which won the European Cup in 1968.
After his career ended in the early 1980s, he relaunched himself as a TV pundit but has been dogged by alcohol problems.
He spent 10 hours in jail over Christmas over an alleged assault but was not charged. In 1984 he was sentenced for 12 weeks for drink-driving and assaulting a police officer.
His tempestuous relationship with his estranged wife Alex has also featured on the front pages of tabloid newspapers recently. She is currently appearing in a British reality TV show set in a jungle in Australia -- "I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here."
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