Posh'n Becks, nothing to declare except celebrity

David Beckham and Victoria Adams are no more talented than other sportsmen and singers. But there's no getting away from them, writes BRONWYN SELL.

It took an election to push Posh Spice and David Beckham off the front pages in Britain, but only a haircut to get them back on.

This was no short-back-and-sides, mind. Becks - a professional celebrity who plays a spot of football, apparently - shaved all but a centre strip of his hair "for a change".

Then he poured soy sauce over his head in a photoshoot for The Face magazine, and democracy and a mildly important man called Tony Blair took a rest as columnists all over Britain hit their keyboards.

The Independent: "Is it right for the captain of the country who gave the game to the world ... to lead out the team with a strip of fur down the middle of an otherwise shaven head?"

The Guardian: "It figures that a man who has so much difficulty expressing himself vocally should say so much with the cut of his hair." Even the venerable Times invited readers to vote for the Becks hairstyle they'd most like to see next - mullet, Keegan, dreadlocks, suedehead or bragg. Mullet won, incidentally. So did Blair, after a record low voter turnout.

Then an 85-year-old Dorset woman had her hair cut Beckham-style to raise money for her disabled granddaughter. Pre-teen boys were seen walking around London sporting the same short mohawk look, and school principals around the country checked their uniform codes in preparation for an influx of half-shaven children.

The public got its celebrity fix, the newspapers got their headlines, and Britain's most famous couple became even more famous - which couldn't be bad for them, considering Beckham had just started a promotion deal with Police sunglasses, and Posh was working on a book and an album.

Consciously or not, the twenty-somethings play the fame game so well they could have been manufactured by the press. Their fame is as extraordinary as their backgrounds are unremarkable.

Mr Posh Spice, David Beckham, was a pretty boy who rose from working-class Cockney geezer to become the prince of English football. Mrs David Beckham, Victoria Adams, was a pretty girl who was plucked from middle-class mediocrity to become a pop princess of little talent.

Separately, they had become everything the media could desire - looks, money, a certain white trash brashness, success and a penchant for stunts. Then they got together, just as a media gulf was forming in the wake of Dianamania, and their celebrity stocks soared. The brand of Posh and Becks, like John and Yoko and Charles and Di before them, was born.

This is not a couple who will hide behind dark glasses and hats. They and their team of publicists play the British media to best advantage. New stunts and scandals seem to break at crucial moments - the launch of a new single, a new book, a new marketing tie-in. Just as things are getting quiet, Becks will do something wild, or Posh will say something stupid.

He'll get a tattoo of her name in Hindi on his arm, and Indian academics will spend days publicly debating whether it's spelled correctly. She'll reveal that he sometimes wears her underwear. He'll wear a sarong in public. She'll reveal that he's an animal in bed. He'll spend a night in jail on speeding charges. She'll reveal he walks around the kitchen saying, "I'm a gay icon".

He'll make rude signs on the soccer field. She'll reveal she was horrified when he - not renowned for his intelligence - beat her at Trivial Pursuit. He'll turn up to training with a hangover. She'll testify against a crazed fan who stole four of her suitcases (Louis Vuitton, of course). He'll get a manicure the night before a big game and fill his hotel room with scented candles.

Oh, and sometimes he'll play soccer, pretty well, and she'll sing and dance, pretty badly. And then they'll write books about it. And other people will write books about it.

And then they'll write more books to counter what was said in the other books, and on their celebrity goes. And so page after page after page of the newspapers - serious and tabloid - are filled.

"Posh and Becks" is a brand that sells, to the tune of £30 million ($104.2 million) - their estimated fortune - and a seven-bedroom London mansion dubbed Beckingham Palace. Their son Brooklyn's photos went to a tabloid for a reputed £250,000, and their wedding photos for a reported £1 million. OK magazine sold 1.6 million copies of that edition. The wedding, held in secret, eclipsed the public wedding of Prince Edward and Sophie.

Now they've even set up their own website (www.victoriabeckham.mu), on which you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about the couple.

The University of Staffordshire offered a degree course in Beckham's cultural significance. It was hugely oversubscribed. "Beckham has become the icon of icons," says lecturer Ellis Cashmore.

They've become professional coathangers, too, credited with bringing denim jeans back into style. They regularly appear at shows of Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Gucci, and the opening of new stores.

Elle magazine's fashion director Iain Webb says the couple are so fabulously uncool, they are cool. "They are the ultimate working-class heroes, who have reached a peak in their respective careers and want to have fun with all that money."

But unlike some icons before them, their fame does not spring out of a blind worship. This is no Dianamania, but more of a Sarah Ferguson-esque fascination with all things trashy.

The newspapers struggle to explain the couple's gobsmacking celebrity even as they perpetuate it. After all, there are world-class athletes just as good as Becks who get much less media attention, and many hard men of football consider him a pansy.

Some of the descriptions of him beggar description. Alexander Linklater in the Times waxed ecstatic: "David Beckham belongs to a different category. He is not only a divine illusion of the media - his rippled stomach glistening for The Face's studio shoot, his mohican haircut heightening the aspect of a noble savage - he also has a godlike skill. Even uninitiates of British football will experience a swoon of awe at a Becks' free kick ... The bloodlike sauce dribbling down his magnificent Apollonian physique in The Face is no lazy contrivance of the popular press. There is a pagan darkness to the eyes."

Posh, who hasn't actually done anything for years, frankly admits: "I'm not the best singer in the world."

Stuart Jeffrey, in the Guardian: "She has become the apogee of the modern British celebrity. She is everywhere all the time, but her presence often begs the question: what exactly is she famous for?"

Posh and Becks seem as surprised at their celebrity as anyone. They insist they're just a couple of people who've been lucky and struck it rich, who enjoy eating takeaway curry and watching telly at home on a Saturday night, who refuse to employ a nanny to look after Brooklyn. They grant surprisingly few media interviews, and rarely say anything enlightening.

Posh, in the Guardian: "If you don't like me, don't read about me. And if you think I look like an old bag, don't put my picture in the paper. I'm not that desperate to be liked."

Becks, in The Face: "People say we enjoy it, and to an extent you do. But if they're gonna get pictures and put 'em on the front of magazines, it's not our choice."

And it's another day, another front page.