Monday 20th May

As a job lot, footballers are a pretty charmless bunch.  When one of them, usually through a paucity of other candidates, wins ‘Sports Personality of the Year’ one wonders just how badly named a title can be.  But occasionally there is an exception, one that breaks the mould, where a sense of genuineness and just ordinary decency shines through.

David Beckham seems to have always been with us, and yet of course it is only twenty years.  But in that time ‘Brand Beckham’ has grown into probably the most successful Sports induced marketing machine we have yet seen.  In a way it was similar to the ‘Beatles’, in that suddenly from out of nowhere everyone was talking about David, he was going to be the Saviour of the English game, he was young, blonde and good looking, and besides everything else a wonderful crosser of the ball.  And yet there was always something else too, an almost tongue in the cheek awareness that all the adulation, the plaudits, the honours were somehow undeserved.

He married Victoria, ‘Posh Spice’, and rather than this being a disaster it seems to be a marriage that works.  He was exposed as (or accused of being) an adulterer, and yet even this barely tarnished the image.  He got sent off in one of the most important games for England, which we went on to lose, and even here he rode the criticism and soon all was forgiven.  He was perfectly happy to be the butt of jokes on Comic Relief, and one cannot really imagine any other couple laughing quite so happily as they had the piss taken out of them.

He has had, I think, three children and appears to be the perfect father.  What on earth he will do with the millions he had acquired is anyone’s guess, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some charity with his name in it appears soon.   Almost uniquely amongst the celebrity sports men and women crowding our screens, the niceness of David Beckham come shining through.