London, Nov 26: The British stiff upper lip, which was deployed to such great effect when Britain ruled India, now appears to be a thing of the past, judging by the extraordinary reaction to the death yesterday of George Best, a former footballer, at the age of 59.

Not since Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris has there been there such a sense of national sorrow as that which followed yesterday’s announcement from the Cromwell Hospital, London, to which Best was admitted in early October, that he had passed away.

Even Tony Blair, who called Diana “the people’s princess” after she died, took time off from the Commonwealth Conference in Malta to do a sound bite for television (even though the Prime Minister admitted he has never actually seen Best play). He all but called Best “the people’s footballer”.

The reaction to Best’s death from multiple organ failure reveals as much about Britain as it does about Best. Despite his womanising ? or perhaps because of it ? the twice married and divorced Best somehow retained a special place in the affections of the British, long after he stopped demonstrating his magic as a Manchester United and Northern Ireland star over 30 years ago.

His death is being treated as a national tragedy, with a huge crowd of photographers and reporters gathered outside the Cromwell Hospital where floral tributes have been piling up. Television has given the news pride of place, while former players and footballers have queued up to recall their memories.

Had P.G. Wodehouse been alive, he might well have been tempted to change the name of his novel, Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, to Pass the Scented Hanky, Jeeves.

Within a short space of time, George Best has made the transition from a gifted footballer to the most gifted player of his generation to the greatest player Britain has produced to virtually St George.

The Manchester United ground, where Best first made his appearance as a boy of 15 before getting into the first eleven at 17, has become a shrine to the player, with talk that there ought to be a permanent monument to him.

Today, a minute’s silence will be observed before kick-off at football matches throughout Britain. Meanwhile, newspapers, too, which now dismiss deaths of British soldiers in Iraq with paragraphs here and there, have gone to town.

“World says goodbye to Best,” The Times headline said, with studied understatement.

The Independent eulogy was equally restrained: “As the light begins to die outside the great stadium, as the temperature drops notch by notch, the more it seems many different types of people came not to mourn the sadness of George Best’s death but to celebrate the excitement and the beauty that he brought to their lives.”

A writer in the Guardian was not to be outdone: “Winter came early to Best’s career. Its teenage spring was bursting with promise, its summer incandescent; there never was an autumn.”

“Biggest funeral since Di,” is the Sun’s front page headline.

“George Best’s funeral will be the biggest since Princess Diana’s,” the paper reported. “Half a million are expected to line the streets of the soccer hero’s home city of Belfast.”One journalist who has so far avoided comment is the editor of The Spectator, Boris Johnson, who got into trouble last year for suggesting that the people of Liverpool had shown “disproportionate grief” after Ken Bigley, a local Briton, was kidnapped and beheaded in Iraq.

Johnson, a Tory MP and former Shadow Arts Minister, was reprimanded by his leader, Michael Howard, because the article in The Spectator had alleged that Liverpudlians “wallow” in their “victim status” and this was a “deeply unattractive psyche” of many in the city.

There are those who think that Best, who was given a liver transplant two years ago, wasted the chance of a new life by carrying on drinking but such criticism is mostly drowned out today.

Best certainly had oodles of Irish charm which helped to bed more beautiful women than goals scored by the top footballers of his day.

“I spent a lot of my money on booze, birds and fast cars - the rest I just squandered,” he once quipped.

On another occasion, he joked (perhaps it was not even a joke): “They say I slept with seven Miss Worlds. I didn’t ? it was only four. I didn’t turn up for the other three.”

Pele good humouredly played up to the notion Best was a better player.

“Pele called me the greatest footballer in the world,” Best once said. “That is the ultimate salute to my life.”

Best, who is survived by his father, Dickie, 87, and his son, Calum, 24, had an understanding of why he was often called a “flawed genius”.

He once admitted: “I was born with a great gift and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.”