In his first television interview since a life-saving liver transplant, football legend George Best reveals his wife Alex suffered a broken arm in a fall after a marital fight.

In George Best: Me and My Liver to be broadcast on Friday on BBC One, a drawn and tired-looking George says: "I never really hurt anybody but Alex and I, we had fights.

"Actually she did have to go to hospital once. She fell and broke her arm once."

Alex, 30, tells the BBC's Fiona Bruce: "That was a little fall-out. That was my fault. I tripped over. It was a little scuffle and George didn't push me.

"I did fall over so that was another trip to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

"It was probably more a case of me hitting him. I mean it was George who used to have the black eye and everything."

When I went back to hospital I felt so useless.....The nurses would leave the bed unmade so I had to get up

George Best

Alex, 26 years Best's junior, recounts how in the blackest moments of his alcoholism she would go two weeks without speaking to her husband.

"He'd come in, he wouldn't speak to me, get changed, go to the pub, come back, have a sleep, go back out to the pub again.

"There were times when it was really bad and I was quite young and looking back on it I wouldn't even go there again...would not put up with it now."

During the interview at the Bests' luxury Surrey home, 56-year-old George discusses his brush with death after a post-operative infection and his feelings of guilt that someone had to die for him to survive.

There was a one in five chance Best would die within a year

"When I went back to hospital I felt so useless. I didn't want to do anything.

"The nurses would leave the bed unmade so I had to get up.

"They said even if I wasn't emotional normally that I would go through certain periods where I would just break down.

"The first time it happened it freaked me out... I was crying my eyes out.

"It only lasted a couple of seconds but since then I've had two or three. I feel such a prat but it's getting easier and easier."

More donors

The former Manchester United star, who destroyed his liver through a lifetime of relentless partying, also confronts the moral issue of an alcoholic undergoing a liver transplant.

"Mr Heaton who performed the operation says for some strange reason since it was known I was having a new liver that the amount of donors has gone up.

"If that's anything to do with me then maybe I'm paying part of it back."

But although George is adamant he will stay off the booze, his wife is more hesitant, saying: "I hope so, I really do but we never know do we?"

George Best: Me and my liver was on BBC One and streamed live from this website on Friday 11 October.