Over the course of nearly three decades, David and Victoria Beckham have gone from constant tabloid fixtures to one of the entertainment industry’s most stable couples. Over the years, their marriage and personal lives have faced fierce scrutiny, from infidelity allegations to financial scandals. But despite the deluge of negative headlines, the pair have always remained united, cementing their image as one of showbiz’s most loved-up couples.
But now, on the eve of the pair’s 25th wedding anniversary, a brand-new book is threatening to challenge that image. The House Of Beckham, the no-holds-barred biography from Tom Bower, tells a story of “money, sex and power”. Seemingly timed to perfection, the book’s release has reportedly left the couple in a state of panic. Just as they’re about to publicly celebrate a quarter of a century of marriage, Tom alleges that the couple are masters of “dishonesty and lies” and live totally separate lives. Their marriage, he tells heat, is “a friendship and a business relationship”, rather than a passionate relationship.
The alleged separation in the pair’s lives can be chalked, in part, down to work. David, 49, spends a lot of time in Miami, where he is the president of football team Inter Miami, while Victoria, 50, goes between New York and London frequently for her fashion line. “The idea of them sitting down together for a cosy dinner in Holland Park every night is ridiculous,” Tom says. “That’s what they want people to think, but it just doesn’t happen.”
The book details how the couple were rocked some 20 years ago by a series of cheating allegations made about David. The most prominent came from his former personal assistant Rebecca Loos, who claimed she had an affair with David for four months while he was playing for Real Madrid in 2003. At the time, David called the allegations “ludicrous”, with Victoria admitting in David’s 2023 Netflix docuseries that this was “the hardest period” of their marriage.
In the book, Tom alleges that the pair were on the brink of divorce following the Rebecca Loos scandal and subsequent other women who claimed to have slept with David while he was married. In their Netflix series Beckham, Victoria said that the pair were “against each other” at this point, with David adding, “There were some horrible stories, which were difficult to deal with. It was the first time that me and Victoria had been put under that kind of pressure in our marriage.”
However, it’s alleged in the book that while divorce was discussed, it was the need to maintain “Brand Beckham”, driven by Victoria, that kept them together. “She had to make sure he understood that they’ve got to work together,” Tom says. “They survive here or sink together. It’s his wealth that sustains her, and his face and manner that produces the endorsements from the big brands. It’s a team effort.”
Speaking about how the pair moved forwards after the allegations, Tom says that it took “a long time” for Victoria to accept that she “shouldn’t control” David. The Rebecca Loos scandal was a point of “huge crisis” for the pair, but Tom claims that even the threat of divorce “didn’t stop him going for other women”. In the years since, Tom says that the pair have found a “comfortable” way of living. The “arguments and the impatience has gone”, but Tom says they exist in a business partnership and friendship, with their four children – Brooklyn, 25, Romeo, 21, Cruz, 19, and Harper, 12 – at the centre.
“After 25 years, they’ve found a way of living,” he claims. “She, who was sometimes neurotic about his behaviour, has calmed down, and the children are much older, so it’s a much easier way of life. But he’s in Miami a lot, she’s always promoting her fashion line. He turns up when necessary, and it works.”
In front of the cameras, however, the couple have kept up the image of domestic bliss. No story from The House Of Beckham exemplifies this more than an alleged incident at a party held by British Vogue to celebrate Victoria and their kids appearing on the magazine’s cover.
The pair were photographed at the party “holding hands with inscrutable smiles”, but according to Tom’s book, they arrived separately, and David left within ten minutes, while Victoria stuck around to party all night. “They’ve spent 25 years posing, so their brand depends on them appearing together,” Tom says. “That is their lives – they pose and then part.”
Another subject that rears its ugly head in the book is David’s long quest for a knighthood. “He thought he would get a knighthood for promoting the Olympics and trying to get the World Cup, but everyone knew his appearance was as an ambassador,” Tom says. “He had to perform on the public stage to get the brands to pay him all the money for the endorsements, so it wasn’t charity.”
Will he ever get one? Tom doesn’t think so. He points to David’s “financial affairs”, and his use of legal methods to avoid tax, as well as the fact that very few footballers have been knighted in the first place. And then there are the emails, sent by David when he missed out on a knighthood in 2013 and leaked in 2017, in which he called the honours system a “f**king joke” and branded the committee “unappreciative c**ts”. “I think the emails were unbelievably, permanently damaging, because they showed the real man,” Tom says.
With the book’s juiciest allegations having been reported across the world, the Beckhams – especially Victoria – have been left reeling. It’s not just the new information being made public that’s affecting her, but the rehashing of old headlines the couple have worked hard to move past that could threaten the image of stability they’ve spent so long cultivating.
“Victoria is feeling extremely exposed,” an insider tells heat. “She has said it’s like death by a thousand cuts at the hands of a jealous bully who talks about you behind your back and gives you no opportunity to defend yourself. It’s such a deliberate attempt to attack their weak spots, with the low points of 27 years of the relationship served up to her on a platter.”
We’re told that David has refused to read the book, but Victoria has seen it as a “personal attack” on her specifically. “She probably is guilty of glossing over things, but now suddenly there’s a list of all the issues, problems and betrayals out there in public, and she feels it’s all pretty ugly,” the insider says.
The source continues, “Every relationship has a history that’s not necessarily always that understandable or pretty to outsiders, but you deal with things as they happen and then hopefully resolve them and move on. Victoria and David worked on things in private and made the decision to stay together, because that’s what they wanted and because their love is strong enough.”