The exact wording is a stock joke about an anonymous sailor, printed in The Reader’s Digest in August 1936 and credited to a contributor named Channing Pollock — nearly a decade before George Best was born. Best is linked to a different variant (“booze, birds and fast cars… the rest I just squandered”), and even that reaches print marked simply “Attr.” with no citation.
“Part Went for Liquor, Part for Women; The Rest I Spent Foolishly” Not George Best. "Part went for liquor, part for women, and the rest I spent foolishly" is a stock gag printed in The Reader's Digest in August 1936 (vol. 29, no. 172, p. 46), credited to a contributor named Channing Pollock and told about an anonymous sailor — nearly a decade before Best was born in May 1946. The same joke has changed hands for decades — George Raft (1966) and Tug McGraw (1975) each told a version of their own, and it reached football via Stan Bowles — but none of them originated it. Best's own variant, "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered," appears in The Times Book of Quotations (2000) marked only "Attr.", with no source. Traced by Quote Investigator, "Part Went for Liquor, Part for Women; The Rest I Spent Foolishly" (19 May 2010).
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to George Best. Use the credit shown above instead.
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? We couldn’t establish where this was first published, so there’s no rights status to give. Credit it as shown above — just don’t present it as public domain, and get permission for commercial or published reuse.
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In context
Evoking the world of Channing Pollock — identity uncertain. Theme: "Part Went for Liquor, Part for Women; The Rest I Spent Foolishly". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Part Went for Liquor, Part for Women; The Rest I Spent Foolishly". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
Where the line actually first appears
Earliest documented printing
The Reader’s Digest, Volume 29, Number 172 (August 1936), p. 46
Credited to
Channing Pollock, as a submitted anecdote about an unnamed sailor
Same month, elsewhere
Pacific Coast Magic News, Vol. 2, No. 10, p. 7 — a magician at a post-convention party in Oakland, after the Seattle convention
George Best’s different version
“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.” — earliest instance cited by Quote Investigator is The Times Book of Quotations (2000), p. 249, marked “Attr.”
Do you remember the sailor who, asked what he’d done with his wages, answered, “Part went for liquor, part for women, and the rest I spent foolishly.”? — Channing Pollock
The Reader’s Digest, August 1936
Quoted as transcribed by Quote Investigator, which records the Reader’s Digest citation as verified on paper. Note the opening words: even here the joke is being recalled, not coined.
August 1936 — the earliest printing anyone has found.Quote Investigator ↗ locates the joke in The Reader’s Digest, Vol. 29, No. 172, p. 46, in a column of illustrative anecdotes, submitted by a contributor named Channing Pollock and told about an anonymous sailor.
The same month, on the other side of the country. The researcher Bill Mullins found a second 1936 instance in Pacific Coast Magic News, where a magician at a post-convention party in Oakland gives the same answer about liquor, women and the rest spent foolishly — evidence, as QI notes ↗, that the gag was already circulating freely.
Decades of new owners. George Raft in 1966, Tug McGraw in 1975, and by 1993 the footballer Frank Worthington, whose version — crediting the punchline to Stan Bowles — was printed in The Independent on 10 September 1995 ↗.
2000 onwards — Best inherits it. A Times reference book files a “booze, birds and fast cars” variant under his name marked “Attr.”, and the press repeats it, including BBC News on 14 June 2005 ↗, which runs it as a pull-quote with no source at all.
No public-domain claim is available here under any reading. The wording’s true origin is an unattributed circulating joke with no identifiable author, and the earliest printing anyone has documented — The Reader’s Digest, August 1936 — falls well after the 1931 United States cut-off in any case. The George Best variant reaches print later still, through in-copyright reference and news publishing of 2000 and after, so we assert no rights status for either wording.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Everyone who has been handed this joke
This is not one misattribution but a queue of them. The line is a floating gag, and Quote Investigator documents it changing owners for the better part of a century — each new host a famous man who had spectacularly run through his money.
✕
The wording on this pageGeorge Best Unsourced
Best is credited with a different variant: “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.” The earliest instance Quote Investigator cites for it is The Times Book of Quotations (2000), p. 249 — which prints it under the flat label “Attr.”, gives no source, and files the Belfast-born Best as an “English footballer.” The BBC repeated it in 2002 and again in a news article of 14 June 2005 ↗, still with no source. Nothing found anywhere puts the “part went for liquor” wording in his mouth.
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The near-identical wordingGeorge Raft He did say a version
The Hollywood star is quoted with “Part of the loot went for gambling, part for horses and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly” in a Parade profile of 23 October 1966 and again in his 1980 obituary. Quote Investigator ↗ accepts that Raft used it — but places him thirty years after the joke was already in print.
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A looser variantTug McGraw He did say a version
The baseball pitcher’s line on his new salary — ninety per cent on good times, women and Irish whiskey, the other ten per cent he would probably waste — ran in Sports Illustrated’s “They Said It” column on 21 April 1975, and Quote Investigator ↗ treats it as genuine.
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The football version before BestStan Bowles Second-hand
The Independent, 10 September 1995 ↗, prints a 1993 remark by Frank Worthington about squandering fortunes on birds, booze and gambling, with the punchline credited to “my old pal Stan Bowles” — so even inside football the joke was being passed along, not invented.
✓
The anonymous originalsA sailor, a hobo, a marine, a cat skinner Nameless
Quote Investigator’s full-text searching turns up the same structure with an unnamed spender throughout, including a magician at a post-convention party in Oakland in Pacific Coast Magic News in the very same month as the Reader’s Digest printing, August 1936.
✓The exact wording belongs to no celebrity at all: it is a joke about an anonymous sailor, printed in The Reader’s Digest in August 1936 and credited to Channing Pollock — who opens “Do you remember the sailor who…”, which reads as a retelling rather than a coining. Quote Investigator ↗, which traced that printing, puts it no more firmly than “created or popularized by Channing Pollock by 1936.”
Context
A joke that keeps changing hosts
Some quotations are misattributed once. This one is a floating gag — a joke with no fixed owner that reattaches itself to whichever famous spendthrift is currently in the papers. Quote Investigator found the money spent on wine, whiskey, booze, liquor, women, horses, gambling, “the finest duds” and three mustache curlers, and the spender identified as a sailor, a hobo, a marine, a cat skinner, the film star George Raft, the pitcher Tug McGraw and the footballers Stan Bowles and George Best.
Best is simply the most recent and most quotable host. He had the biography the joke needs — a Manchester United career he first walked out on at twenty-six and a very public life of drinking — and once a line fits a man that well, nobody checks it. The 2000 reference book that fixed it to his name did not even get his nationality right, listing the Belfast-born Best as an “English footballer.”
Even in 1936 it arrives second-hand: “Do you remember the sailor who…”
Why the wording matters more than the sentiment
It is worth separating two claims that usually get muddled. The sentiment — I blew a fortune and cannot account for the last of it — is genuinely part of how Best talked about himself, and no one disputes that. The wording in this quotation is a different matter: it belongs to a 1936 gag Best never used.
Best’s own version is not the one people search for either. What he is credited with is “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered” — and the earliest instance Quote Investigator cites for it is a reference book of 2000, printed without a date, a venue or an interviewer. Wikiquote carries the line too, but its only citation is a BBC news article of 2005 that also gives no source. That is a chain of repetitions, not evidence.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Credited in The Reader’s Digest, August 1936 · identity uncertain
Channing Pollock is the name printed beside the earliest known appearance of this joke — a reader submission to The Reader’s Digest in August 1936. Quote Investigator is careful here, and so are we: a Channing Pollock (1880–1946) was an American playwright and drama critic; a second Channing Pollock, the movie-star magician, was only ten in 1936 and is ruled out on age. QI still declines to confirm the playwright is the submitter — “it is not certain that the joke submitter Channing Pollock is the same individual.” Pollock’s own phrasing suggests he was not the author either: he opens with “Do you remember the sailor who…”, which is how you retell a joke, not how you coin one.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented printing
“Illustrative Anecdotes III,” The Reader’s Digest 29, no. 172 (August 1936): 46, submission credited to Channing Pollock. Traced in “Quote Origin: Part Went for Liquor, Part for Women; The Rest I Spent Foolishly,” Quote Investigator, May 19, 2010.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Part Went for Liquor, Part for Women; The Rest I Spent Foolishly’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/part-went-for-liquor-part-for-women-the-rest-i-spent/