BiographyIt seems to be the fashion these days for celebrities to publish a new autobiography at least once every two or three years.
Perhaps these volumes will soon begin to flow even more frequently, and we could have Madonna's My September, Ruby Wax's What an Easter Saturday! and David Beckham's Things I Have Done Since Last Year's Biog. Beckham has certainly published his life story at least once before; indeed, I remember reviewing one of his previous metaphysical speculations on the Meaning of His Life and suggesting that he had written the book in much the same sense that the Pharaohs built the pyramids. My Side, however, is a different matter entirely. David Beckham wrote this book in the sense that Caesar conquered Gaul.
The second sentence, describing a football dressing room, gives it away. "Scuffed tiles on the floor, the smell of disinfectant drifting up from around your ankles". David Beckham wrote these words in the same sense that Oscar Wilde was tongue-tied and allergic to lithe adolescent males. Tom Watt, ghostwriter for the book, has decided rather craftily to cast the whole narrative in novelistic style, treating us to a picaresque tale of the gullible young protagonist who sets out on his journey. Along the way he meets a beautiful princess who is visibly wasting away for love of him, and has lost her singing voice into the bargain. The chapter devoted to this encounter is entitled 'The One with the Legs', which is not quite the kind of thing one finds in Nell McCafferty.
The couple, both crying like babies, are married by the Bishop of Cork, "a mad Manchester United fan" who is evidently now known among the Irish hierarchy as Purple Spice. The bishop is obviously a liberal, since David had young Brooklyn tucked under his arm at the time. Having wrestled with an especially revolting ogre (a part superbly played by Alex Ferguson, whose "passionate nature" is actually itemised in the index), the hero ends up with a splendidly embroidered hairband and a castle in Spain.
Speaking of Beckham residences, there is a poignant moment when David, newly arrived in Madrid, notices Victoria is looking particularly tense. She has, he explains, just been driven around the city "looking for somewhere to call home". It is the look of weary desperation one often glimpses on the faces of the homeless, as a stroll down Dublin's Nassau Street will confirm.
Beckham's chivalric devotion to Victoria shines through the book. They were once, during their courtship, sitting on a leather sofa and David was afraid to move, "worrying about what noise I might make on it". Rarely has such delicacy emerged from a football dressingroom. Requesting Posh's hand in marriage from her father in traditional ceremonial manner, he is greeted by the traditional ceremonial response: "Yeah, no problem".
There is a mystery about David Beckham. It is not quite that he is both a genuinely nice guy and also acting the role for all he is worth. People are often accomplished performers of what they actually are. Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis really were reactionary old buffers, and at the same time played the part with admirable distinction. It is rather the fact that while Beckham's genuine niceness and ordinariness has helped catapult him to fame, a genuinely nice, ordinary guy wouldn't relish the fame in the way he transparently does. There is the Beckham who likes nothing better than to curl up with a take-away among the cavernous halls of one of his several baroque pads, and the Beckham who offers himself up to the camera every hour of the day as a scrupulously poised erotic object.
Both Beckhams are absolutely authentic, if that isn't too hyperbolic a term. It is simply that, like a married couple long bored with each other's company, they never seem to talk to each other. The problem is that erotic Beckham needs take-away Beckham to add to his allure, but take-away Beckham is embarrassed by this exhibitionist alter ego and pretends he isn't there, rather as one might with a twin who was forever picking his nose in public.
The most puzzling bit of the book is the dedication, which reads: "To Victoria, Brooklyn and Romeo, the three people who always make me smile. My babies forever, love David". And then, in simulated handwriting underneath, "Daddy". Is it too paranoid to sense a whiff of dysfunctionality here? Does this conventional family man really regard himself as his wife's daddy? Or, indeed, as brother ("David") to his own children. Does the spectre of an Oedipal drama lurk beneath the bland surface of the Beckham ménage? Or is it just that he can't write?
There are actually two books in My Side, which makes it even more value for money. One is written by Tom Watt, and includes unBeckhamish phrases such as "there was a little folly; ancient, tumbledown, and a bit magical". The other is written by Tom Watt masquerading as David Beckham, and includes sentiments which resonate evocatively, such as "people say a change is as good as a rest". But since, judging by this book, Tom Watt isn't much of a writer anyway, the gap is not too disturbing.
Terry Eagleton is professor of cultural theory and John Rylands fellow at Manchester University. His latest book is After Theory (Penguin)
My Side By David Beckham with Tom Watt CollinsWillow, 404pp, £18.99