Expert: Professor Roger Williams
A surgeon who treated Northern Ireland football legend George Best during his battle with alcoholism has died aged 88.
Professor Roger Williams CBE was part of the pioneering team that performed the world's first liver transplant at Addenbrooke's Hospital in the UK in 1968.
His skills as one of Britain's most prominent liver specialists would later serve the Belfast-born star well, whose troubled relationship with drink would ultimately claim his life.
An obituary in The Times traced the relationship between the prominent surgeon and the mercurial former Manchester United player.
“Despite never having seen Best play on the field, he and Best became close friends and Williams, tall, slim and well-spoken, became the sympathetic face speaking to the cameras about the slow decline of Britain's first footballing superstar.”
“In 2002 he performed a life-saving liver transplant on a footballer at Cromwell Hospital and waived the fees for bankrupt players, but the benefits were short-lived.”
“We worked hard on George and he did very well,” Williams explained later, although he acknowledged that Best had not always followed his advice.
In 1966, the surgeon established the Institute of Liver Research at King's Hospital in London.
He formally retired in 1996, but later went on to found a new liver research institute at University College London.
Two years later, he launched the nation's first adult-to-adult living donor liver transplant program.
Roger Stanley Williams was born in Southampton, Hampshire in 1931.
He was the only son of Stanley Williams, a real estate agent, and his wife Doris (née Clatworthy), who ran a canvas factory in nearby Humble.
Professor Williams is survived by his widow, Stephanie, and three adult children.
