As the Beckhams finally get what they’ve apparently always wanted, what does it say about the institutions that put so much energy into blocking them? And what does it say about the rest of us?
When the unauthorised, warts-and-all biography of the Beckhams, The House of Beckham, came out last year, it was in the distinctive style of its author, Tom Bower, which is to say, incredibly mean. But it was quite short of warts, to be honest: of course, there were youthful indiscretions – David Beckham’s Madrid years featured an alleged affair and an insufficient tip in a restaurant, and Posh once made a TV show that people didn’t like. But the Beckhams of today were guilty of nothing greater than that they wanted a knighthood, and had done for a really long time.
That was why, according to Bower, David volunteered to help in the Philippines after the 2013 Typhoon Haiyan, and why Victoria gave all her castoffs to the Chelsea Red Cross which raised some eyebrows at the time, just because the last imaginable thing you would need after being hit by a typhoon would be 78 pairs of cerise stilettos. That was why David had reportedly “unleashed his foul-mouthed tirade” (to use the proper tabloid phrase) by email once his honour was rejected, calling the honours committee a “bunch of cunts” and lambasting Katherine Jenkins because she got an OBE “for what? Singing at the rugby and going to see the troops plus taking coke. F—ing joke.”
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