Inside Brand Beckham: The truth about Posh's millions

WED in 1999, David and Victoria Beckham are two mega stars rightly hailed as a trailblazing power couple.

But as reports surface of Victoria’s fashion business losing tens of millions and as David gives repeated interviews calling their marriage “hard work”, there appears to be a cost to the stiff upper lip of Britain’s “other royal family”.

ARE THE BECKHAMS HEADED FOR DIVORCE?

The most recent wave of accusations that the Beckhams’ marriage is crumbling came a month after the couple’s iconic appearance at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. In a funereal-black outfit, Victoria simmered and frowned on the happiest day of literally everybody’s lives, the look coming replete with a black veil.

(While it’s considered traditional deference to wear black to a wedding not to take the limelight from the bride, Victoria’s unmoving frown, part of her personal brand, was truly something to behold.)

The couple has responded to the latest wave of cheating accusations with forceful denials and a united front. While other celebrities have moved into releasing statements via their own social media accounts, the Beckhams keep it old school, firing out a formal statement through a publicist.

“This is just fake social media news. This is all very bizarre and an embarrassing waste of time,” they said.

It was partially on point; the rumour did indeed break via social media, not an actual news source — a trend that has been gaining more and more traction as Twitter users and commenters pass around conjecture and hearsay.

But this is by no means the first allegation of cheating in an otherwise bulletproof marriage.

The latest scandal was centred on an alleged affair between David and a teacher of their daughter Harper. Thousands of social media users shared a leaked private email from a junior publicist to her family where she passed on gossip to her family members. The public relations firm she works for represents major celebrity clients such as Gordon Ramsey and Sarah Jessica Parker.

The PR firm acknowledged its junior employee was not the originator of the story but suspended her nonetheless for embarrassing the company and the Beckhams.

The Beckhams have a modus operandi that is tried and tested when it comes to cheating scandals. As accusations arise, the Beckhams staunchly deny. Such is the dyed-in-the-wool pattern that the tone of the tabloids can often be, “Guys, come on!”, imploring both the reader and the Beckhams themselves to get real.

BECKHAM CHEATING SCANDALS: AN INCOMPLETE PRIMER

By no means the first but definitely the most damning cheating scandal arose in 2003, when David was spotted frolicking in a nightclub with the family nanny, Rebecca Loos, in Spain while Victoria was in England with the children. David denied the allegations of “sex sessions” but they re-emerged the next year when Loos’ brother confirmed the affair to the Daily Mail, saying his sister had been depressed and tearful after her dismissal by the couple, and looked “heartbroken”.

The next week, Australian model Sarah Marbeck came forward with a detailed account of a months-long affair with David. She gave a fanciful account of an affair where David called her Tinkerbell and referred to himself as Peter Pan. She was paid $800,000 for the story. David claimed he had never met the model and dismissed the claims as “ludicrous”.

Victoria was pregnant at the time the initial rumours surfaced and, during a joint interview on Parkinson, told of how the press coverage shook their marriage.

“It was a really traumatic time for both of us,” she explained. “I was pregnant at the time and I think a few girls wanted to launch a modelling career so decided to drag David’s name into that.

“As much as you can trust someone and someone can say, ‘Honestly I haven’t done this, I don’t know this person’; as much as you want to believe that person, they’ve still put that element of doubt in your mind.”

In the interview, David hinted at being low and considered jumping out of a hotel building at the time. Although he then joked the hotel was above Lake Como and the water was inviting.

More cheating scandals emerged in 2005 and again in 2010, the latter of which saw David unsuccessfully sue the publisher In Touch. (In the USA, such reporting is protected by laws surrounding free speech.)

POSH’S FASHION BUSINESS IS HAEMORRHAGING MONEY

Victoria celebrated her 10th year in the fashion industry in 2018, but reports of her business becoming financially unviable have dogged an otherwise celebratory time, marked by Australian Vogue covers and her powerhouse show at London Fashion Week. The firm posted enormous profits in its fifth and sixth years, but as the brand has expanded and become more visible and lauded, its ability to generate income has nosedived.

“I get more nervous every season, not less nervous, because the brand keeps getting bigger,” Victoria said at her last fashion show.

It was reported last year that Victoria’s fashion business was suffering from financial woes, the business posting a loss in the vicinity of $15.2 million (£8.4 million). The business had borrowed $12.1 million (£6.7 million) from her husband’s company since it was founded in 2008. This is despite the business generating a profit of $353.6 million (£196 million) in the same period.

Conversely, David’s business ventures, some also in fashion, raked in $44.9 million (£24.9 million) in profit last year. The financial viability of Victoria’s ventures are moving in direct inverse proportion to that of her husband’s and seem to be wholly supported by his funds.

“Do we stay together because it is a brand? Of course not,” David told the BBC on a recent podcast, addressing persistent rumours that Brand Beckham serves as a financial enclave for a fashion business that would otherwise have likely folded.

Victoria’s vision is uncompromising and unsmiling; her ready-to-wear collection at New York Fashion Week is highbrow, hallmarked by dresses that retail for about $3000. A pair of Victoria Beckham jeans are about $600. Her cheaper, mass-market line with Target is likely lucrative, but an outlier in a career that has otherwise mostly provided items that are high production cost and financially prohibitive to buy.

WHO ARE THE BECKHAMS?

In David and Victoria’s interviews, the talking points on their personal lives stay unwaveringly on brand.

They talk about their children and their love of family and their “work ethic”. It was David’s familial focus that first attracted Victoria to him, when she met him after a game in the Manchester United Players lounge. She described the other players “drinking with their mates” while David was standing with his family.

It’s an affiliation Posh both admired and saw in herself, saying she was very family-focused. They had their first child Brooklyn a year after they met and were married four months later in 1999, in a wildly epic ceremony attended by their boy, who acted as baby ring bearer.

They sat in golden thrones and cut their cake with a sword. As a symbol of their love, they released a single dove. Elton John was due to fly in between gigs in Spain to perform, but a heart attack prevented him from doing so. The wedding reportedly cost $1.6 million (£880,000).

The couple have shared often that they fell in love at first sight, which David clarified happened for him before he even met Victoria. “As soon as I (saw) her (I wanted to get together),” he said in a Parkinson interview.

“I didn’t even have to meet her, I just saw her on the telly and I just wanted to meet her.”

THE BECKHAMS SHARE A BURNING AMBITION

David’s father was a kitchen fitter who regularly took him to a nearby park, where he’d kick balls at a goal with no net. David described his father as “a bit of a taskmaster”, training him not to kick goals, but to hit the crossbar of the goal.

It’s a sentiment echoed by David’s wife: “I’ve always had it in my personality to want to succeed. I’m one of these people, when someone kicks me, I try hard to get up again.”

Despite the couple’s enduring love, Victoria is hard on herself. She has been open about struggles with eating disorders, still routinely joking about not eating.

Her advice on long, happy marriages is coloured by a focus on appearance as the central source for desire. “Never let yourself go completely (at least brush your hair, clean your teeth, have a bit of a brow going on because you will always want him to look at you and feel attracted),” she wrote in Vogue.

In this same piece, which is a searingly intimate letter Victoria writes to her 18-year-old self, she is somewhat brutal with her teenage self: acknowledging she is “not the prettiest, or the thinnest”, she has “bad acne” and is “plump”.

“If you don’t join the Spice Girls, you might always be that insecure person in that little shell, and you will never become who you truly are,” she wrote.

Victoria recounted being photographed while sitting poolside when she was pregnant with her first child, the resultant shot being, according to her, “unkind”. It made the front page of a British tabloid and still affects her today.

“Do I relax on the beach in a bikini? No,” she said in Vogue. “I am still hugely self-critical, and because of that I can be a little uptight.” She goes on to recount periods of fad dieting before reassuring herself that her weight will “settle” and her skin will clear up. She also chides herself for having a boob job, adding, “All those years I denied it — stupid. A sign of insecurity. Just celebrate what you’ve got,” advising her younger self to “embrace (her) imperfections”.

The letter was stark and bare faced for a star who has, despite being highly visible, been largely silent on most elements of her life. Victoria’s life has been so dissected as to make her frightened and wary of the press.

NO LONGER A SPICE GIRL — BUT WHY?

The Spice Girls announced this week they would reform as a foursome without Posh. The news devastated many fans, but Victoria wished her bandmates well on her socials. “I won’t be joining my girls on stage again but being in the Spice Girls was a hugely important part of my life and I wish them so much love and fun as they go back on tour next year,” she wrote.

Victoria did perform with Spice Girls at the London Olympics closing ceremony in 2012, but has reflected somewhat bitterly on her role as an actual singer. “They used to turn (my microphone) off and just let the others sing,” she said.

“Luckily because I used to wear heels, I just used to jig about a bit and I got away with it.”

Victoria did not receive a solo line in the band’s first song Wannabe and does indeed jig about in the periphery of the music video. She said the experience in the band took a toll on her confidence.

She has opted to conclude her career as a singer (viva) forever and focus on fashion and her marriage, which, for now, remains intact.

BECKHAMS BARELY SEEN TOGETHER IN AUSTRALIA

During their recent trip to Australia, the Beckhams spent little time together in public

The couple’s whirlwind trip to Sydney to support Prince Harry’s Invictus Games was mired in its own controversy, as the couple split up and embarked on a number of separate activities, including girls and boys days (respectively, pampering sessions at a Darlinghurst nail salon and hiking the Harbour Bridge).

This came after Victoria cancelled her attendance at the opening ceremony to spend time at a German wellness retreat that specialises in “weight loss” and “emotional balance”. David had just given a candid interview to Lisa Wilkinson, telling her he found marriage to be “hard work”.

“To have been married for the amount of time that we have, you know, it’s always hard work. But you make it work,” he said, after touching on a number of topics including the school drop-off and how to keep fit when you have kids. It was reported that the general comments about marriage left Victoria “in tears for two days”.

David also revealed last year that the couple had renewed their vows in a super private ceremony. “It was a lot more private (than our first wedding), about six people there in our house,” he said, going on to add that the mistakes had been made in their marriage.

Victoria spoke of her own unwavering resolve to stay married, no matter what. “We both realise that we are stronger together than we are as individuals,” she told British Vogue in September. “Would either of us be in the position we are in now had we not met and been together all those years ago? It’s all about the family unit.”

“We all know marriage is difficult at times.” David said, again, in 2017 speaking to the BBC. “It’s about working through it.”

And their hard work has paid off. The Beckhams are a family of considerable wealth, estimated to be somewhere in the vicinity of $1.6 billion (£900 million).

But recent reports that David’s business ventures are flourishing while Victoria’s flounder are hard to ignore.

— Phoebe Loomes is a freelance writer. Find her on Twitter @dollyybird

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