David and Victoria Beckham knew from the outset that raising Brooklyn in a goldfish bowl would come with challenges, but little did they know how far apart it would one day push them
Victoria Beckham said she wanted her first-born to have a ‘normal’ life(Image: Getty)
Speaking in the final episode of his self-titled Netflix series, an emotional David Beckham reflected: “Brooklyn at the time was so young. He had to go through that and I don’t know whether it’s harmed him in…I don’t know. I don’t know…”
He was, of course, talking about the fall-out of his alleged affair with PA Rebecca Loos while he was living in Spain, playing for Real Madrid. At the time, he denied claims they had embarked on a torrid romance after she was appointed to settle him into his new life while Victoria remained in England with their young children.
Brooklyn was just five at the time, and his mum recalled the overwhelming scenes. “It was very difficult for Brooklyn because he was older, and he had photographers screaming things,” she said. “They used to scream things to Brooklyn about his mum and his dad.”
Last month it became all too apparent that Brooklyn, now 26, has indeed been left with deep scars caused by life in the fishbowl. In an explosive six-page rant, he accused his parents of trying to ruin his marriage to Nicola Peltz and of briefing the media against him amid their estrangement.
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Four-month-old Brooklyn Beckham was front and centre at his parents’ wedding (Image: Copyright unknown)
“My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else,” he raged. “Brand Beckham comes first. Family ‘love’ is decided by how much you post on social media, or how quickly you drop everything to show up and pose for a family photo op even if it’s at the expense of our professional obligations.
“I grew up with overwhelming anxiety. For the first time in my life, since stepping away from my family, that anxiety has disappeared. I wake up every morning grateful for the life I chose, and have found peace and relief. My wife and I do not want a life shaped by image, press, or manipulation.”
A life in the spotlight is all that Brooklyn has ever known, despite his parents’ initial hopes and plans. In a joint 2001 interview with Michael Parkisnon, Victoria, then 25, and David, 26, said they wanted to give their new baby a chance at a ‘normal’ life.
“I want him to grow up as much like a normal little boy as he can, but obviously that’s never going to be totally possible,” Victoria said. “I mean we don’t surround ourselves with huge entourages, you know I go to work, I take Brooklyn with me, I drive myself, we go home and shut our doors and nobody comes in our house. I like to do normal things – take him to the park, take him swimming.”
Brooklyn was five when his parents’ marriage was rocked by affair claims(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
But life was anything but normal. Elton John and David Furnish were named as his godfathers, Liz Hurley his godmother. Recalling his birth in her autobiography, Learning to Fly, Victoria told of the frenzy that gripped the nation. “Next morning I turned on Capital Radio. ‘And now we go live to Portland Hospital where Posh Spice has just given birth to baby Brooklyn.’ In the next street there was a shop with a great big arrow in the window and a sign saying ‘Brooklyn This Way.’ Mad or what?” she said.
However, even then she noticed a clue about what was to come. “There was advice from the astrologers. Brooklyn was a Piscean, and we were going to have trouble keeping him under control due to the position of Mars, one wrote. I hadn’t looked at the stars since [training with the Spice Girls] in Maidenhead.”
Brooklyn was just four months old when the couple sold exclusive picture rights for their wedding to OK! for a record-breaking £1million. His first birthday party was a £10,000 bash at the exclusive Cottons Hotel in Knutsford, Cheshire, complete with an A-list guestlist including Spice Girls Mel B and Emma Bunton, and David’s Man United teammates Gary Neville and Paul Scholes. It also included a magician, a face-painter and four clowns with the hotel locked in a ring of security.
Security was a common theme in the tot’s life after a kidnap plot was foiled in 1999. Police managed to stop plans to abduct 10-month-old Brooklyn and mum Victoria while David was playing for England at Wembley Stadium. No arrests were made, but the episode traumatised the family who hired bodyguards to protect their son at all times.
Victoria Beckham seen driving out of Nobu on her 39th Birthday after having dinner with her family(Image: Splash)
Brooklyn has spoken openly about life in his bubble. Having moved with his family from Manchester to London, Spain and Los Angeles – where he was followed by security to and from school – he struggled to make short-term friends. “I’ve changed schools quite a few times but I have some really close friends that have known me since I was very young, so nothing ever changes with them,” he told Miss Vogue in 2015.
Victoria was not oblivious to the pitfalls. “When Brooklyn was born, people said, you know its going to be really difficult bringing him up. But I didn’t understand,” she admitted in her book. “He could be taught to say please and thank you like anyone else, I decided. And he does. But now I’m beginning to see what they meant. It’s nothing either me or David do or don’t do. It’s just our situation.
“Of course I can bring him up to be a nice little boy – and he’s already turning into a really nice little boy. The first words he learned were ‘pees’ and ‘ta’ and he knows what ‘no’ means. It took something quite little to bring home to me how hard it was going to be to get the balance right.”
In one telling anecdote, she recalled how her mum’s friend Dee took him shopping in Enfield while she was in Europe with Dane Bowers and it started to rain. Instead of dashing for cover, ‘he just stood there… his little hands held out trying to catch the drops, amazed. And everybody else was staring, wondering why he didn’t take shelter. And she told me this – like here’s a funny story for you – but I was suddenly overcome by guilt. He did it because it was a new experience for him. He’d never been in the rain, he went everywhere by car.”
However, she hit back at claims she was using her firstborn as a ‘money-spinner’, telling OK! magazine, “I feel really protective of him… I obviously did see a lot of newspaper cuttings and there were people saying that I was selling pictures of him and I was doing this and I was doing that. That was just people being cynical.
“The one thing I said, right from the start, which is why Brooklyn isn’t in the pictures that we’ve done today, is that he’s the one thing that is totally private for us. He’s not a money-spinner. People were saying ‘they left the hospital with their little asset’, and that really hurt a lot.”
David Beckham was determined not to force his son in any given direction(Image: PA)
In his teens, Brooklyn took a job in a local coffee shop while studying at art college. He’s flitted between careers, trying out as a footballer for Arsenal before quitting and moving into photography, cooking and now hot sauce. David was always determined to raise him in the same way that his parents Sandra and Ted had raised him, by offering support but ultimately letting him find his own way.
“My mum and dad have always helped me and given me all the advice that I needed, but in the end they said, ‘What do you want to do?’, and they left the big decisions up to me,” he once said. “Whether it was the move up to Manchester or whether to stay in London and play for Tottenham or Arsenal. It was never ‘We support Man Utd, so you’re going up there’. I think that’s important because if you’re pushed into something you tend to go the other way.”
But for Brooklyn, fame was never a natural fit. He once admitted to being so scared ahead of a shoot for the cover of Man About Town that he threw up. “I was very nervous,” he told Wonderland. “I was being sick, I was with my mum, but it went really well.”
Now living full-time in the US, he and Nicola don’t shy away from the camera, posting regular selfies and videos of his cooking. Meanwhile, the other Beckham boys have also pursued a career in the spotlight, with Romeo on the catwalk and Cruz in a band. They are, by the very definition, the ultimate nepo babies. But Victoria argues that they still deserve a chance.
“I mean, I feel sorry for these kids that are considered nepo-babies,” she told The Sun. “The kids are simply the kids of their parents. It’s not their fault. Give them a chance. What matters is that people are good and kind. It is fine to be ambitious, but it is more important to be kind.”