“SEND a photographer to the Trafford Centre,” the voice of a woman English journalists dubbed ‘the devil publicist’ instructed a newspaper executive, as she hysterically requested that his publication’s lensman record impromptu, albeit setup, paparazzi-style images of her client whilst she went about buying baby clothes for her baby boy!
“Fooling people becomes part of the buzz,” remarked a client – a member of a British all-girl pop band – by way of admitting manipulating the Fourth Estate to her image’s advantage and as if conspiratorially concurring with the publicist, an employee of hers!
“It would be brilliant if I could become as big as Gazza,” a football player had earlier been recorded elsewhere wishing for himself in reference to then English football midfield dynamo, Paul Gascoigne.
A burgeoning star in his own right, his utterance had had the effect of baffling his then club’s manager, Alex Ferguson and England’s men’s football team’s then manager, Glen Hoddle – as to how he could identify someone who became an unstable alcoholic, as his role model!
The singer’s parents had inculcated ferocious ambition into her veneer, with her self-made businessman dad beseeching her ‘don’t mess around, you’re there to make money’ – whilst by age seven, the footballer’s gas fitter dad was a hard taskmaster already drilling discipline and stubborn ambition into him!
It would fall upon fate for fame and fortune to embrace and consume the duo, still strangers, at very young ages with the pop singer already being a member of a Spice Girls band which had sold 8.5 million albums and earned millions of pounds from shows and merchandise – and the soccer player, who at 21 had come to the public’s attention after he had scored a spectacular goal from the halfway line for Manchester United against Wimbledon in 1996, becoming the face of hair cream brand, Brylcreem’s ‘Brylcreem Boy’ marketing campaign on a two-year deal which netted him 200 000 pounds sterling!
“I fancy that bloke,” cooed the Spice Girl one day in November 1996 whilst pointing out to the footballer during a Manchester United versus Chelsea match at Stamford Bridge, with her band’s manager later, as per her request, introducing the strangers pending a moment which was to serve as a marker for the duo’s conjoint destiny – which was to culminate in matrimony on July 4, 1999!
Dubbed ‘the showbiz wedding of the decade’ and as an early hint of the songstress’ ability of having the news media at her beck and call, ye gods, even OK! magazine parted with a cool 1 million pounds sterling for exclusive picture rights to the shindig! Such a hold, invoked repeatedly, upon news outlets would over ensuing time also extend to the publicizing of both her career and commercial aspirations – even when the couple, separately or jointly, found itself caught in the crosshairs of the chameleonic industry!
Assuming the role of cheerleaders, some of the prominent British news such as The Sun trumpeted that ‘the showbiz couple had become the new royalty’ and when they acquired a seven-bedroom mansion set in 24 acres they renamed Beckingham Palace worth 3,14million pounds sterling, it manifested to their fans as the Beckhams’ proof that there was no birth-right to being rich and privileged!
A match they might had appeared to be amongst admirers and observers or just the media’s creation (tabloids with bottomless bank accounts duplicitously held them up as society’s beacons in one piano-esque dance of fingers on a laptop’s keyboard and conversely as fodder purposeful for the increase of readership figures when they fell short of living up to expectations) for it wouldn’t be long before the pair’s idyll would be checkmated by perpetual reality.
At the outset, the Spice Girls’ disintegration in 2000 served to expose the singer’s shortcomings and temperament as self-defeating towards her stated aspirations – with her endeavours unfolding like a litany of ambivalent experiences: for someone who stated that she wanted to be ‘bigger than Persil washing powder’, compared to the other Spice Girls who went on to achieve success in their solo careers, she was not a talented singer – with producers occasionally switching off her microphone during performances to prevent shows being ruined; she had to swallow the ignominy of a recording label’s reluctance to release her album; her unsuccessful venture into the fashion business through her VBH operation – despite Beckham and other investors coming to its rescue through financial injections; her husband retorting that “you’ve got nothing on me baby” after she’d insisted that she too was an icon like him; Sharing an intrinsic pursuit of fame and fortune at all costs harking back to even before they met, she ultimately aligned her own public image with that of his international superstardom to propel the phenomenon known as Brand Beckham!
Mere couple of years into their Hollywood-esque union, it inevitably hit turbulence when a coterie of opportunists traipsed onto their radar.
First on was a prostitute referred to as ‘Tinkerbell’ (real name Sarah Marbeck), whom the footballer had consorted with at Singapore’s Shangri-La hotel who salaciously intimated that ‘I looked down and there was David Beckham kissing my breasts.
David Beckham!’ To be followed by a Danish ‘vicar’s daughter’ named Celina Laurie who, in an August 2002 exposé, claimed that the soccer player bedded her as she realized that picking up girls after matches ‘was quiet normal for Beckham.’
It was pending this period that the singer informed a magazine that she would ‘die of a broken heart’ if the player were unfaithful. Opting to be based in the US in an attempt to resuscitate her dwindling music career whilst the allegations swirled around her husband as he remained alone in Spain after having transferred to Real Madrid – she obstinately insisted on spending time with showbiz mogul, Damon Dash whom a friend of hers described as rendering her ‘utterly entranced’ and making her ‘feel special.’
The crisis further escalated as he yielded, first, to the seduction of an assistant named Rebecca Loos in his hotel suite around September 2003 where the Adonis repeatedly rued the adulterous act the duo was entangling in simultaneously as the Dutch lass was lamenting how “he’d been going weeks without sex, trying to stay faithful to Posh” – and subsequently to a blonde lingerie model known as ‘Miss Big Lips’ (real name Esther Canadas) with whom he made out at teammate, Ronaldo’s villa up a hill pending the Brazilian’s birthday shindig around that time.
With newshounds eager to expose his extra-marital activities, it would ironically fall upon her to salvage the situation by flying into Madrid and staging a photo opportunity augmented by a joint statement from the couple which read: ‘Our marriage is not in crisis. We are extremely happy together.’ Alas, hers would prove to be a momentary deflection offset by a torrent of exposé by some of the people associated with the couple – and published by tabloids which also dished generous monetary dollops to deep throats!
A multi-layered chronicle of the Beckhams, their outlook on life include: her nonchalantly revealing on Channel 4’s Breakfast programme that Beckham wore her G-string; Beckham upping everyone’s game in the Man U car park, according to impressed teammate, Roy Keane, by alternatively arriving at training in his collection of cars which ranged from Ferrari to Rolls-Royce, etc.
Included too are the couple’s obsession with money which included being privy to opportunities to legally avoid taxes; Beckham’s move to Miami where he invested in a stake in the Inter Miami soccer club where its coup acquisition became Lionel Messi; Becks’ disappointment at his sons not emulating him into soccer; their firstborn, Brooklyn marrying a US billionaire’s daughter; the couple’s alleged attempt to replicate the Kardashians effective publicity onto their four children in the promotion of their brand; their cavorting with Hollywood stars such as Tom Cruise and Charlize Theron and other global celebrities, etc.; Posh and Becks’ Anna Wintour-commissioned Vogue cover by photographer Mario Testino; his lucrative and controversial promoting of Qatar as a tourism destination, etc.
Remarked Gary Neville regarding his once Manchester United teammate: “He wanted to be a global superstar. Football was never enough for him.”
These and more are revealed in British author, Tom Bower’s new tome, The House of Beckham.
The House of Beckham is a trade paperback published by HarperCollinsPublishers UK and distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball Publishers.
Available at leading bookstores countrywide, it retails for R440.
