It’s beginning to get ridiculous. What more does David Beckham have to do to secure himself a knighthood? The decorated ex-footballer was spotted at the weekend, flat-capped and head down, waiting in line to see the Queen’s coffin. Reports suggest Beckham was offered the chance to use a special access queue, but declined (wary, perhaps, of some This Morning-style blowback), opting instead to wait for 13 hours with the rest of the hoi polloi. Naturally, the public flocked to sing his praises; the old “national treasure” epithet has been slung around with abandon.
By this point, the British people are all too familiar with Beckham’s acts of service, both major and minor. Many of these took place on the football pitch. After being vilified to the point of flaming effigies for his petulant red card at the 1998 World Cup, Beckham burst back into the nation’s favour with a sensational, crunch-free kick against Greece in the 2002 qualifiers. He would go on to captain his country for six years. More recently, the footballing icon has been a patron of the sport both at home and abroad. He’s campaigned for World Cups and the 2012 Olympics. Ferried the Olympic torch along the Thames. Held meetings with the PM at Downing Street in a bid to tackle global food poverty. He even flew out during the war in Afghanistan to gladhand with the troops, a one-man morale machine. Short of draping himself in the union flag, getting the Queen’s face tattooed on his sternum, and maybe recolonising some small part of the Asian continent, there’s not much more old Becks could have done to endear himself to the British hegemony. So what’s the hold-up? Why is he languishing in the ignominy of a mere OBE?
