George Best & Jim Allister: Surprising link emerges during TUV leader election grilling

After facing an intense grilling on all the issues of the day, BBC Talkback asked Mr Allister today to disclose something about himself that most people wouldn’t know - something the broadcaster said they were going to put to all the party leaders.

Never stuck for a second throughout the rest of the interview - on questions ranging from the NI Protocol, to mandatory coalition, power sharing and conversation therapy - the normally polished lawyer confessed: “That is the most difficult question you have asked me”.

However he did come out with a surprise nugget about his connection to soccer legend George Best.

“Probably a lot of people don’t know that when I was a small boy living on a small farm just outside Crossgar, George Best and his family and the Withers family as well [his mother’s family] had a country summer cottage just beside us,” he said.

“George Best, not that I knew the star that he would become, used to play football, in our farmyard. So I have that small claim to fame, that I knew George Best before a lot of people.”

Asked if he tackled the legendy, Mr Allister replied: “I was much wiser than that.”

He did not actually say whether he kicked a ball around with Best, although it would appear that George would have been around seven years older than the TUV leader, so if they did, perhaps the soccer idol may have gone easy on the young Mr Allister.

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