I CAN think of many good ways to spend 67 minutes - but watching a film of David Beckham asleep is not one of them. I'd rather stick needles in my eyes.
The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool does itself no favours by taking Sam Taylor-Wood’s preposterous film of Becks’ boring Zzzzz’s on loan from the the National Portrait Gallery in London.
The ex-England skipper’s star is definitely on the wane. The Walker people should have realised that rather than clamour for dated, second hand cast-offs from the capital.
No matter how much David Beckham might still hob-nob with Hollywood actors, rap musicians and lousy Brit artists, his former luminosity cannot now be restored.
With David, as with his stick-like missus Victoria, it’s always been about promotion of self-image and, frankly, body fascism.
I remember him turning up for his televised Real Madrid medical a few years ago with his hair done up like a thirty bob tart's and wearing glittery earrings, an ice-cream man’s jacket and a blouse undone to the belly, Posh-style.
And he’s revered as a style icon? Truly, the world’s gone mad.
Okay, Becks is a brilliant footballer. And he can still claim to be a model husband and parent, I suppose, even after posing with Posh for those dodgy, sexed-up pictures in Vogue mag.
What will his kids think when they come across steamy images of mam and dad a few year’s from now?
Devoted father though Beckham is, he’s also creepily child-like himself, in a show-off sort of way, always drawing attention to himself.
I’m sure he has enjoyed some aspects of playing happy haciendas in Madrid in the past few years. After all, there are lots of things he likes over there - fancy face creams, silly haircuts, Alice bands, ghetto chic suits, sarongs, thongs and tattoo parlours. You name it, the Spaniards have got it.
Why is it that Beckham attracts so much adulation anyway? Apart from his huge talent for football, that is, which I do admit he has in spades (his free kicks, his crosses, his scoring and creating of so many memorable goals – these are gifts from God).
In other respects he behaves like a vain, stuting peacock ... a slave to designer labels, dripping with diamonds, tweezing his eyebrows, smiling coyly for the cameras, striking ‘cool’ poses such as a callow youth would practise in front of the mirror before the school disco.
That’s no way for a thirtysomething married father-of-three to behave.
The Beckhams’ road show has been going on too long. Just what is the reason for the midfielder’s astonishing appeal?
Becks does have a strange and unsettling charisma, and it has nothing to do with eloquence, that’s for sure. Inarticulate and squeak-voiced, he comes across as a classic “fick footballer”.
Yes, he’s handsome in a youngish-dad-next-door sort of way but he so obviously fancies himself and that’s always unattractive.
The designer clobber, the bling-bling jewellery, the constantly changing barnet, the posing for dodgy homoerotic magazine covers and adverts ... all these things scream: “Look at me, I’m gorgeous, I am, and I know it.”
David’s fans are a strange mix of lads, girls, motherly women, horny-handed, fiftysomething Man U fans - and gay men.
And they all absolutely love him. I just can’t work it out. I see a sulky man with too much money, a pushy wife and no common sense.
And he’s part of the international Jet Trash Set now, flying in for Elton John’s over-the-top parties etc., which is to be pitied rather than admired.
It’s tempting to blame Posh for all the poncing around and vulgarity which has marked the Beckhams’ now stilted progress up the celebrity ladder but I suspect David happily goes along with it.
The pair of them are like excitable youngsters who are enthralled by celebrity.
Their own, unfortunately...
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