Victoria Beckham punched her husband David in the face after the first reports of him cheating. She’s so tight with money she once expensed some Marks & Spencer crisps during a photo shoot. And the couple hit such a low-point in 2016 that they barely spoke.
These are just some of the juiciest allegations made by celebrity biographer Tom Bower in his bombshell new book about the Beckhams, The House of Beckham, branded “a symphony of snide” and “a ghastly portrait” of a couple locked in a devil’s bargain depending on which of the early reviewers you ask.
The unflattering, tell-all biography lands on bookshelves this Thursday (June 20) and promises to be a study of the Beckhams’ marriage, featuring everything from allegations of infidelity to entertaining anecdotes about Glastonbury and family photo shoots for Vogue. Bower, a former BBC Panorama reporter who has written biographies on everyone from Mohamed Al-Fayed to Simon Cowell, certainly doesn’t hold back on painting the couple as ghastly, vane, power-hungry pair (”they personify the superficiality of contemporary celebrity,” he writes) and commentators say it risks denting the great British power brand that is Posh and Becks. Wreckage, Shame and Downfall are among the chapter titles.
From Becks’ nickname for his wife during alleged affairs to the time he dropped a “bomb” about their marriage during a TV interview, these are some of the most explosive allegations.
Posh punched Becks in the face after the first reports of him cheating
There have been various rumours of infidelity during the couple’s 27-year relationship, but Bower claims the first slew of rumours — that he called her to admit he’d been accused of kissing another woman while she was pregnant with their first son, Brooklyn, in 1998 — got her so worked up she punched him in the face. "I hadn't planned it,” she reportedly confessed. “I hadn't punched anybody before. Just instinct. I just felt angry and hurt."
The couple fled to Lake Como in Italy in a bid to mend their relationship, and went onto tie the knot four months after Brooklyn’s birth, in July 1999.
Five women reported to have had affairs with Becks
The first woman to claim she’d had an affair with David, Rebecca Loos, has been widely reported. The then-26 year-old Dutch graduate was hired as the footballer’s assistant when he joined Real Madrid in 2003 and claims she and the former football star slept together after “connecting” on a night out with friend. "I would always say to myself, 'Don't risk your job' and I knew there was a huge risk involved if I got involved with this man," Loos has previously said. He has always denied any allegations of an affair.
Bower nods to various other alleged affairs in the book, from prostitute Irma Nici and beauty salon owner Danielle heath to Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins, who has denied that here was ever an affair or that she’s ever been on her own with Becks.
Another woman, Sarah Marbeck, also claims she had an affair with Becks in 2004, allegedly sharing sexts with him for up to two years as and sleeping with him in a hotel in Singapore while he was on tour with Real Madrid. He has called the story “absurd and unsubstantiated” while Victoria told The Sun at the time: "We have been through a lot worse than this, and we're definitely going to get through this."
Posh ‘chain-smoked’ in Madrid after reports of the Loos affair
Lonely and unhappy. That’s how Bower describes Posh’s life in Madrid after reports of her husband’s alleged affair with Loos.
“Her life in Madrid was lonely and unhappy,” he writes. “Although she had everything money could buy she was isolated. With few friends, she was unwilling to learn Spanish. Her diet, rigorous exercise and chain-smoking reflected her anxieties.”
The couple are obsessed with money and incredibly tight
That David and Victoria are obsessed with money so have to remain a “global brand” attracting “constant public interest” is the main point Bower attempts to drive home in the book.
He also claims they are incredibly tight. Examples he gives include Victoria expensing some Marks & Spencer crisps at a photo shoot and the couple being annoyed at an employee who’d claimed for an £8 taxi. “Beckham gave the impression that playing the tax card had become nearly as important in his life as kicking the ball,” Bower writes.
It was also this stinginess that prompted Loos to go public about her alleged affair with Becks, Bower claims. “The turning-point for Loos was realising Beckham’s double standards. After a meal for SFX employees at Madrid’s Hard Rock Cafe, Beckham did not leave a tip,” he writes.
“The following day, the waitress gave Loos a note for Beckham. Explaining that she survived on the tips, she expressed her anger that someone as famous and rich could be so mean. After reading the note, Beckham was alarmed. ‘Give her this,’ he said handing over a thick wodge of euros. Reflecting in February about how Beckham had played her and lied to her, Loos was angry.”
They ‘barely spoke’ and lived ‘separate lives’ at a point in 2016
Bower paints the marriage as a rollercoaster, but according to him, one low-point — around eight years ago, in 2016 — saw David and Victoria so on the rocks that they essentially lived separate lives and had minimal communication.
He calls it a “distant business relationship” and claims David accused Victoria and her publicist of “waging a media war” against him. Two years later, in 2018, he appeared on TV show The Sunday Project and called their marriage “hard work”, which Bower claims left Victoria watching on in “disbelief”. “It was like a nuclear bomb had gone off,” says Bower. “Her husband’s disloyalty baffled her. His truthfulness had destroyed her efforts to conjure up an image of happy families. Why, she sobbed, would David embarrass her?” She reportedly fled to a Baden-Baden spa hotel for two days.
The only reason the couple remained united, Bower claims, was for the brand. “[David’s] status and survival would have been washed away without Victoria’s determination to maintain the illusion of a happy family,” writes Bower. “She steadfastly protected the brand. In return he continued to finance her vanity business. Her tiny fashion house is unlikely ever to be genuinely profitable, but her supporters fully approve her steely ambition regardless of the monotonous repetition in promotional interviews.”
Becks referred to Posh as ‘Wendy’ during one affair
“He always looked like he was evaluating each woman,” Bower writes of David when he was in his agent’s London office. “Some longed for his attention. Others would later say he was rather creepy.”
During the alleged affair with Marbeck, who he reportedly nicknamed Tinkerbell, Becks reportedly referred to Victoria as “Wendy” and told Marbeck he fantasised about picking up as a call girl just like Richard Gere did with Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.
Posh launched a search party for Becks at Glastonbury
One particularly notable anecdote in the book is from Glastonbury. The footballer attended the festival in 2007 with a small group of friends including his best friend, the sports agent Dave Gardner — a regular drinking companion who Victoria reportedly disapproved of — with Victoria due to arrive later from New York.
The night before her arrival, Becks and Gardner were reportedly seen partying until 5am with the a group that included a "glamorous Australian bikini model" and Lady Mary Charteris, a married member of London’s notorious Primrose Hill set who David had been seen dining with at Chiltern Firehouse a few weeks before.
"'There was no hassle and a great mood until she landed,' complained one of the group," Bower writes. "With her entourage she headed in a golf buggy through the scruffy campers to the VIP zone. She was furious that her husband had failed to reply to her telephone calls and had dispatched a search party.
"Eventually, David appeared. Within seconds, they were embroiled in a ferocious argument.... 'They looked quite miserable,' said one eyewitness, 'but they managed to pose for the cameras'”.
Neither of them can act
“We were shocked by his voice,” Bower quotes a staffer working on one of David’s TV adverts for the brand Brylcreem as saying. “We couldn’t get a performance out of him.” More cutting still is the claim that Becks struggled to kick the ball into the back of the net of an open goal for the shoot.
His wife was reportedly no better when it came to her own moments in front of the camera. “Her trademark sense of humour is not evident,” Bower quotes an executive who worked with Victoria on a shoot for Walkers Crisps. She reportedly refused to eat the crisps and accused her leg double of looking nothing like her.
The couple had a furious row over a Vogue photoshoot
14 years on from the Loos affair claims, the Beckhams reportedly agreed to an interview with Vogue to quash fresh speculation about their marriage being on the rocks.
"That would be an ideal platform to crush rumours of a split," Bower writes. "The interview would be accompanied with photographs of the Happy Beckham Family. Beckham returned specially to London for the photoshoot....the entire Beckham family was to be photographed sitting as a harmonious group in a wooden rowing boat on a pond, which was to be shot as if it were a lake.
"But soon there was tension over whether David would appear in the shoot, with the footballer's publicist adamant that he would not take part. Not mentioned was Beckham's new opinion that his children should not be exploited for the brand. Unspoken was his apparent fury with Victoria's endless self-promotion campaigns. The wrangling was followed by an outburst between Beckham and Victoria. Beckham relented. Finally, the family was shuffled on to the boat."
What happened next resulted in a furious row, claims Bower. "Unexpectedly, once the six were afloat, Beckham insisted that his cocker spaniel Olive should feature in the shot too. The dog had 71,000 Instagram followers. Gingerly, the boat was pushed from the shore. Suddenly, Olive jumped into the water.
"Beckham was about to follow and rescue his pet. Screaming 'No', worried that his clothes would get soaked, several assistants plunged into the water to grab the dog. Victoria's face turned to thunder. Another argument blew up. A sulk descended. Plans for the family photo were ditched.
"Victoria posed only with the children and the spaniel. In the aftermath, Beckham and Victoria posed as a twosome, separate and looking rather severe. But they were, as ever, consummate actors. No one looking at the perfect images could have imagined the dramas over the proceedings. The cover photograph would be of Victoria, and only with her four children."
Becks’ marriage advice to Brooklyn was not to worry and to ‘have fun’
The words Becks reportedly gave to his won Brooklyn before he married his now-wife Nicola Peltz in 2022. "Just love each other, try not to worry about anything, and keep working. Just try to have fun,” according to Bower.
That advice could be telling, given some of Bower’s claims about Becks’ own marriage in the book, which commentators say could be damaging to the brand that is the Beckhams. Whether Becks takes his own advice and tries not to worry remains to be seen.
