Trend It Like Beckham

This was a commissioned article for the theatre programme of Phoenix Theatre's production of Bend It Like Beckham (2015).



As well as his skills on the football pitch, David Beckham is world-renowned as a style icon. Whether on the ball or at the ball, Becks has given us some bold (and bald) fashion choices over the years.

Curtains For England

After becoming a crucial part of the Manchester United and England teams in 1996–1997, with his bendy free kicks, pinpoint crosses and goals from the halfway line. It was all beginning to gel for Becks – including his heavily gelled ‘curtains’ hairstyle. By the time the 1998 World Cup in France arrived, his barnet was blonde; but he saw a different colour – red – when he got sent off in England’s match against Argentina.

Going For A Sarong

When Becks flew to France, his new fiancée, Victoria Adams (aka ‘Posh Spice’), travelled along with him. The Spice Girl supported Becks at all of England’s matches, and the couple were spotted at a French restaurant, where Becks famously flaunted a black and white sarong!

Match Of The Day

Posh and Becks were inseparable, and they became a focus of the tabloids and paparazzi. In 1999, they were snapped wearing matching black leather catsuits at a Versace party. The same year, Becks won an amazing treble with Manchester United, married Victoria in a lavish ceremony covered exclusively by OK! magazine and had his first child, Brooklyn.

Grecian 2001

By early 2001, Becks was sporting a new Mohawk haircut and also the captain’s armband for England. In perhaps the game of his career, he scored the crucial extra-time equaliser – a trademark curling free kick – against Greece in October 2001. He’d replaced his Mohawk with a buzz cut by this point, and his clear head helped England qualify automatically for the 2002 World Cup.

The Show Must Go On

2002 saw the release of the film Bend It Like Beckham. Becks was due to come to the premiere, but two days before, he famously broke his metatarsal during the UEFA Champions League quarter-final. Newspapers ran headlines such as ‘Break It Like Beckham’ and ‘Mend It Like Beckham’, and the term ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ entered the vernacular. Beckham loved the film and praised the stars’ ability to bend the ball!

The Real Deal

In 2003, Becks left England in a €35 million transfer to Spanish team Real Madrid. He stood out in a star-studded team, not just on the pitch but on his head: his many hairstyles during his seasons in Spain included the double ponytail, Alice band, the bleached blonde crop and cornrows!

Ink Kin

As well as his hair and clothes, Becks is also well known for his tattoos, many of which are dedicated to his family. His first tattoo on his back features Brooklyn’s name, and he’s since had various inkings to represent his other children, Romeo, Cruz and Harper, plus, of course, Victoria, whose name he has inscribed in Sanskrit.

The Name Of The Game

Following spells at LA Galaxy, AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain, Becks announced his retirement from football in 2013. He’s now a worldwide household name, having given his endorsement to many products over the years, from soft drinks to supermarkets, films to fragrances, Adidas to Armani. He’s also lent his name to good causes, including UNICEF, various AIDS charities and his own sports academy.


© John Good

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dipsticks In Amsterdam

Image
  One of the most curious phenomena in the history of British comedy was movies based on sitcoms. This can perhaps be traced back to The Army Game ’s film spin-off, I Only Arsked! (1958), but it was the 1970s that saw its golden age (if you can call it that). Most of these movie versions paled in comparison to their TV counterparts, with many of them featuring recycled scripts or disorientating cast changes. Sometimes, they would offer something different to the TV show, such as Johnny Speight’s 1968 version of Till Death Us Do Part partly focusing on Alf Garnett’s war years. However, this difference usually meant the cast being supplanted outside their “sit” (often at the expense of the “com”) and sent on holiday, such as Holiday on the Buses , George and Mildred and, most notoriously, Are You Being Served? , where all the staff of Grace Brothers went abroad together! Although the sitcom movie spin-off was a dead duck by the 1980s, you could still see them repeated regularly ...
Read more

How Volunteering Saved My Life

Image
I haven’t updated this blog for several months, which is down to a combination of procrastination and being busy rehearsing for an amateur-dramatics production of Blithe Spirit . Ironically, it’s the latter that’s inspired me to write this latest post.  My latest adventures volunteering with my local am-dram group are something I would have never envisaged this time last year, when I was awaiting the results of a short course of chemotherapy. I had been diagnosed with an abdominal germ-cell tumour in January 2024, which came about following another type of voluntary work. A month earlier, I had been planning to return to Rugby Hospital Radio, to present a one-off 1980s Christmas show. A few days before the show, I had been experiencing painful abdominal cramps, which I’d put down to indigestion or an irritable stomach. However, the over-the-counter medication hadn’t worked, and after struggling to get through the three-hour radio show, I decided to go to the drop-in centre at St Cr...
Read more

Cutting A Caper: The Joy Of The Comedy Crime Gang

Image
This was a commissioned article for the theatre programme of the Oldham Coliseum Theatre Company's production of The Lady k illers (2016). What is it about the machinations of Professor Marcus and his motley crew in The Ladykillers that delights us? Are we drawn in by criminal gangs because it allows us to see them get their just desserts or do we actually like to see the bad guys succeed? W e enjoy watching the gun-toting gangs in films like Bonnie and Clyde , Die Hard and Reservoir Dogs , especially as they’re made up of charismatic and stylish villains; but the moment they shoot an innocent civilian or policeman, they become difficult to root for. So it usually falls to the gang in comedy caper films, where crimes are more far-fetched and bullets are less likely to be fired than quips (or sticks of rock), to lure us in and make us feel complicit in the illicit. The crime caper genre has its roots in the more dramatic heist films of the 1950s, most notably John Huston’s The As...
Read more