David Beckham's leaked emails

[parrots]

I thought he came across rather well on Desert Island disks the other day, but AIBU to be glad that DB has been exposed?

I've always regarded the Beckhams as a textbook example of much that's wrong with our celeb-culture, accumulating vast wealth and renown on the coat-tails of very mediocre talent.

Now it seems the charitable work was all in aid of securing a knighthood.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4190152/Hackers-release-tranche-Beckham-s-personal-emails.html

"How can we like people who we don't really know?"

This fascinates me. It's so easy to imagine that you know what a celebrity is really like, based on their public appearances or what gets written about them in the newspaper. But you don't really know them at all. And the media is very intolerant, unfortunately, of shades of grey - celebrities are either saints or sinners.

It's always weird when people claim to be grief-stricken when a celebrity dies, because in truth, you have no idea what that person was like in real life - whether they'd be a good friend, whether they're kind, whether they take their turn at standing a round or washing the dishes, whether they're incredibly vain and boring.

Yes it would seem so, derxa

Listening to a local radio phone in this morning and the male listener was asked "is all of DB charity work just for PR or do you think it was genuine?"

Male listener replied "well look who is wife is.. of course its PR she would have made him do it"

Love how VB is blamed for e-mails written by DB himself because shes a women

It's the Daily Mail. That's the biggest defence he can have. Also what about his work with football clubs for young people. As for courting knighthoods. Well there are others who did this shamelessly. Bruce Forsythe is one.

Victoria was blamed for his affair with Rebecca Loos as well.

The fact that the Daily Mail are out for him is not a defence though. If what we are being told is true, it's pretty bad, and it matters not which newspaper are commenting on it.

The daily mail has done some big investigations in the past, they campaigned endlessly justice for Stephen Lawrence for example.

It's the done thing on mumsnet to slate the DM, call it the daily fail etc (to demonstrate how intellectually superior you are).

I think above his ambition, his inflated sense of talent, his brand, his sell out family life perfect press set pieces, it's the lack of honesty.
We can take ambition, we cannot take misrepresentations by celebrities. If your image is Mr Nice Guy you have to fucking be a nice guy.
I'm talking about loads of nice guys too, not just Beckham.... Jason Manford, James Corden, Nick Knowels.... all of them.

He's done a lot of good works and I doubt that initially he did all these things just to get a knighthood.
More likely, as he's worked tirelessly for so many causes, people around him began to say he should get a knighthood and after consideration he agreed.
Why are people so quick to put the boot in?

He's being punished for getting the injunction. Good. He's made his personal and family life as much of a product as Tesco Baked Beans, so he can't whinge privacy when the publicity it brings isn't what he wants.

He's in court whinging on about privacy whilst his publicist is instagramming private family snaps for damage limitation. What a hypocrite. If the injunction doesn't get overturned it shows just what a charade our courts are.

I also feel that the thing about VB is a bit more complicated than a woman being blamed for the sins of the husband. As a huge football fan I believe DB changed enormously after he started to see VB. This is the reason why Alex Ferguson got rid of him. He was too interested in a world other than football. His move to LA Galaxy was pure folly (imo). There was little or no value in the move in footballing terms. It was simply to give his family the LA experience. Somebody has mentioned Paul Scholes and he is a brilliant comparison. He was better than David Beckham but a more modest person you could ever wish to meet. How many people could pick Paul Scholes' children from a crowd? I certainly couldn't. In fact there are countless celebrities, more successful than David and Victoria Beckham whose dc I would not recognise. Something about him saying in DID that his dc are in the public eye anyway, as a way of justifying them doing Burberry campaigns, making records etc just didn't ring true for me.

His move to LA Galaxy was pure folly (imo). There was little or no value in the move in footballing terms. It was simply to give his family the LA experience.

God forbid a MAN should make career decisions with his family in mind!!!

I disagree that he changed. He was always a bit different from the other players, even before he met Victoria. I remember reading about how he thought nothing of spending £150 on trousers

"He has a point about Katherine Jenkins."

I agree!!!

It appears that he is petulant, quite keen to avoid tax (nothing illegal about that but when HRMC says something's not allowed, you just have to cough up), and doesn't understand the honours system.

It is entirely corrupt and played on favourites. If you are involved in a dubious tax avoidance scheme at a time when there is a clampdown on that kind of thing, then you're not going to get one. It's just what happens.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when Victoria goes to the palace to get her OBE. Will he wear his one like did at William and Kate's wedding? Will he have had a moan about it like Katherine Jenkins?

Don't be silly Whadd A football career is incredibly short. There is plenty of time for LA life after it. It was a bad move from a footballing point of view. At the time the Beckhams were saying that David wanted to go into films (he had auditions) and VB did that weird documentary. It was a strange move at that point in his career.
As for the £150 trousers, all the players bought expensive clothes, not just DB.

It's embarrassing for Desert Island Discs too. He's a completely legitimate guest, but what was going through their heads when they decided to trumpet him as the subject of their 75th anniversary?

Was the Dalai Lama busy that day?

The inclusion of Katherine Jenkins was incredibly pointed given the rumours.

The Beckhams got so famous because he was a good footballer who looks gorgeous. Simple as. They've been canny, and managed their brand really well, but the public knows nothing about them at all. We barely ever see them talk outside very tightly controlled situations. I'm sure they can be nice on individual encounters but that's not the whole of them or their marriage. How many of us know a friend of a friend who had their mortgage paid off by the Beckhams for some favour? It's almost a fantasy of a good-looking rich couple and what they might do.

Same as most other famous people. We are handed an image; it's no different now to 1930s Hollywood, when gay actors were ladies' men, and illegitimate pregnancies were hidden. Social media gives the impression that we see the 'real' them, but that's nonsense.

Sometimes you get a critical mass of passing encounters that suggest the 'truth', good or bad, about a celebrity. Frequently the 'truth' about what they get up to (eg Beckham's affairs) is an open secret in certain circles, but the press won't cover it for a whole variety of reasons.

But it's amazing what the rich and good looking can get away with.

You have to feel for Gary Barlow when he finds out that Beckham got blocked from getting a Knighthood because of a dodgy tax avoidance scam.

As for the £150 trousers, all the players bought expensive clothes, not just DB.
So why did the press bother writing about it? And why do I still remember reading it 25 years later? If you watch the 'Class of 92' he gets a lot of good natured ribbing by the other players e.g. about the time they all got a club car and he went straight out and got his customised. He was different well before Victoria came along.

I agree Notjustuser That's why the newspapers get themselves into a righteous indignation about these things. They know the difference between the public image and the actual reality.

Floisme The papers were crazy for DB at the time, but prior to that it had been Ryan Giggs and prior to him it was Lee Sharpe. They all had their turn in the spotlight. I had a Saturday job in a clothes shop in central Manchester at the time as did several of my friends and honestly, a lot of them were buying really expensive stuff.

VB has always been a very convenient whipping boy for DBs image though hasn't she? Whenever he does anything controversial it's always her fault. She made him do it.

Rather than him changing I think that meeting VB just brought out a part of his personality which was already there. At the time they got together everybody was so busy castigating Jimmy Gulzar for being a goldigger hitching himself on to a money making machine nobody thought to question if Becks was doing a bit of the same. Nooo, it was 'luuuurve'.

And every time he does something questionable it's her fault, she didn't like Manchester, she didn't like Spain, she made him leave his clubs, he cheated because she was making a record in LA rather than keeping the home fires burning. She's not stupid, I'm sure she's complicit in this and knows that it's always worth her taking a hit to preserve his image. But I don't buy all this 'perfect golden boy ruined by being under thumb' rubbish that we're supposed to believe.

It's the Daily Mail. That's the biggest defence he can have.

It was NOT the Daily Mail. Can't you people read?

The origin was a investigation by French media. A UK broadsheet was going to publish first as an exclusive but then The Sun broke the story in the UK because the emails were made public by Football Leaks. It was then picked up on by The Daily Mail and others.

Have a look at Piers Morgan's twitter feed for chronology.

I love the way that because the DM website is so prolific everyone blames them for everything and every expose there is.

I know the players cowgirl - I used to hang around outside George Best's boutique I still say that, even in those circles, David Beckham stood out and got ribbed for it. The point I'm making is that I don't agree with you that Victoria changed him, although she may have encouraged him to express that side of himself more.