A sporting icon courted by prime ministers previous and current, newly knighted Sir David Beckham is famend for being extraordinarily media savvy.
By no means extra so than after I interviewed him for Sky Information on the 2008 Beijing Olympics, after he took half within the closing ceremony having performed a key function in London’s successful bid to host the 2012 Video games.
Talking about Sir Alex Ferguson within the interview, canny Sir Becks heaped reward on his outdated boss in our interview. However he’d been much less complimentary about his outdated boss in a dialog with prime minister Gordon Brown, I later discovered.
Sir David took half within the closing ceremony on the Beijing Olympics. Pic: Reuters
I’d travelled to Beijing with Mr Brown, by way of Afghanistan, and we spent the ultimate night of the Video games on the handover social gathering, when Boris Johnson – then London mayor – famously spoke in his speech about “wiff waff” (desk tennis) coming dwelling.
Throughout his Beijing go to, Mr Brown had been selling the concept of a Nice Britain soccer workforce competing on the 2012 Video games and there was hypothesis about Sir Alex being the workforce’s coach.
“Aah, Sir Alex,” Becks mentioned wistfully and apparently affectionately after I requested him about being re-united together with his former Manchester United supervisor in the course of the interview. “Like a father to me.”
Later, on the flight dwelling to the UK, after I informed Gordon Brown concerning the interview, the prime minister laughed. “That’s funny,” he mentioned.
“Why?” I requested him.
He replied: “He told me ‘If Sir Alex is manager, he won’t pick me!’”
Beckham performed for Fergie at Manchester United from 1995 till 2003, when he joined Actual Madrid amid claims that Ferguson disapproved of the participant’s showbiz life-style.
By 2008 he was taking part in for LA Galaxy within the US.
However regardless of his canny, PR-savvy solutions in my interview, I noticed him work the room that evening in Beijing and glad-hand relentlessly.
He gave each interview requested of him and turned on the appeal on behalf of UK PLC to everybody current.
For politicians and prime ministers, sportsmen and girls like Beckham are pure gold. David Cameron was additionally a fan and was photographed sitting alongside Becks on the London Video games.
David Beckham and David Cameron watched BMX collectively on the London Olympics. Pic: Reuters
When “Goldenballs”, as spouse Victoria known as him, retired from soccer a yr later, a No 10 spokesman gushed: “The prime minister’s view is that David Beckham has been an impressive footballer all through his profession.
“But not only that, he has been a brilliant ambassador for this country, not least if we remember all the work he did on helping us win London 2012.”
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There was certainly a Nice Britain males’s soccer workforce on the Olympics, but it surely was coached by former England legend Stuart Pearce, not Sir Alex.
And Pearce, nicknamed “psycho” for his aggressive model on the pitch, didn’t decide Becks both, although he claimed he’d confronted stress from Downing Road to incorporate him.
Then in 2017, David Cameron’s former spin physician Craig Oliver claimed a senior Tory cupboard minister – thought to have been George Osborne – prompt giving Becks a peerage and appointing him sports activities minister in a 2013 cupboard reshuffle.
That by no means occurred both, clearly, although not less than now David Beckham can be a knight – similar to his “father figure” Sir Alex.
