Did anyone else feel a flicker of shame watching the Beckham documentary? I did. Those poor Beckhams. That wedding. Those monstrous matching purple outfits. Those thrones. God how we sniggered and sneered. What was wrong with us?
The gripping four-part Netflix documentary they have made is instructive in so many ways, but the most interesting thing I took from it was how harshly two hard-working working-class people who succeeded in rising above their station got smashed down for it in so many ways by a culture that at the time celebrated the public shaming of the newly coined “chav”. Were they laughed at, reviled and vilified because they were highly ambitious and “common”?
They have experienced real success yet there are some things time cannot heal or fame and riches smooth over
The series offers searing insight into David Beckham’s childhood in Leytonstone as the son of Sandra, a hairdresser, and Ted, a kitchen fitter. The show follows his incredible career from playing for the first time for Manchester United at 17 to his emotional retirement 20 years later, the interim dotted with fleeting highs and desperate lows.
A lot of the focus is on Beckham’s personal nadir, when he was sent off after lashing out at Diego Simeone in the World Cup in 1998. England lost, the entire country blamed him for it and he suffered months on end of extraordinary vitriol. Was it because he seemed a bit thick, or wore a sarong, or had a silly voice that people just thought they could bully him? The footage shows Beckham soldiering on in the face of unrelenting abuse. “Inside, it killed me,” he says, while Victoria says: “He was really depressed. Absolutely clinically depressed.”
Beckham was one of the most successful footballers in the country, but he was more than a footballer, he turned himself into a brand, and made a ton of money in the process. Well done him, you might say, but a lot of people at the time didn’t like it and despite “making it” the Beckhams were still often just figures of fun. It seems bizarre now that they were so underestimated.
While in Germany many ex-football players go on to be the CEOs of clubs, in Britain they very rarely run the business side. Beckham is at the other end of the spectrum, the first ex-footballer who has set up and runs a football club in Miami. He also got the greatest player in the world, Lionel Messi, to play for him, once again by being innovative and giving him equity options in the club.
Equally, Victoria was not only part of one of the world’s most successful ever girl bands, but reinvented herself as a major fashion designer. Some will always struggle to take her seriously — she has no background in couture and her label famously loses a lot of money — but what she has grown is arguably more valuable than money. She is now part of the cultural conversation with luminaries from the fashion world genuflecting to her on every front row.
They have both experienced extraordinary success and yet there are some things time cannot heal or fame and riches smooth over.
The lasting impression is of a man who shouldn’t be sad, but is, poring over footage from his career, still trying to make sense of the various betrayals (Glenn Hoddle, Alex Ferguson, Fabio Capello), and agonising over spiteful media coverage and dark moments in his marriage. He has spoken about suffering from OCD in the past, here he discusses the “tiring” disorder that leaves him cleaning his house for hours long after his family have gone to bed.
“I clip the candle wax, I clean the glass, that’s my pet hate, the smoke around the inside of a candle,” he says. “I know, it’s weird.” He has said that one of the reasons he keeps getting tattoos is because he is addicted to the pain.
Padding around his Cotswold home in his cashmere cardies, spending 10 hours a day “just grilling” and making honey from his bees, you get the feeling he’s still so traumatised by all the hate. It’s hard not to share his confusion as to why they as a couple were treated so unkindly. He should be so fulfilled, and yet Beckham is reminiscent of Tom in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, poring over old TV footage “forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game”. Like Tom, he achieved everything he ever wanted, but still remains haunted. And most of the nation participated in inflicting that trauma. We owe it to them to try to work out why.
