THE tribunes and chroniclers of Middle England have always had a curious relationship with showbiz and royalty – they fawn all over the parade of popinjay grotesques who bow and scrape beneath the Queen and see no reason to question the millionaire lifestyles that they enjoy and that we fund.
They reserve their deepest resentment and disdain, though, for that most reviled of creatures: the working-class lad or lass who has done good but is now getting ideas above himself or herself.
This week, finally, it was David Beckham’s turn and it’s been a long time coming. Private emails to his agent revealed that he is desperate to receive a knighthood to an almost comical degree.
That sound you hear is the braying and snorting of middle-class types.
“In what country do the likes of you ever get to gain parity with the likes of us?” they seemed to be asking.
The Daily Mail did what it does best and unleashed one of its frontline attack dogs to slap down another oik who actually thought he was something.
Beckham’s seamless crossover between sporting prowess and celebrity culture is probably now being studied in a course at Loughborough University, leading to a degree in brand ergonomics or some such.
As a footballer, I admired him greatly. He wasn’t blessed with prodigious talent but through sheer hard work, professionalism and dedication he honed what he had and, in a sparkling career, donned the colours of Manchester United, Real Madrid, AC Milan and Paris St Germain; four of the biggest clubs on the planet. He had a wand for a right foot that could land a ball on any target that his brain wanted it to reach. He ought to have been sponsored by Nasa.
Long before the end of his career, Beckham must have realised that in the length of time it takes to say “you’re on the bench today, David,” he would be like 99 per cent of other gifted footballers – immediately forgotten and forced to eke a living from appearing on the odd talk show or Radio Norwich.
He decided to take control of his own destiny. He knew that in this shallow age of self-gratification, agents and marketing people swooned at his feet. For here was that rare thing: a world-class sportsman with handsome, unspoiled features and great physical beauty.
Not only that, he wanted to play their game as much as they wanted him. Here was the ultimate 21st-century spirit of the age, a human being whose brain and body was so malleable that it could be made to represent anything you wished it to.
He seemed to encapsulate health, beauty, fitness, money and sex, all the temples of this age, and their high priests circled him like jackals. The problem here though, is that the object – in this case Beckham – was cleverer and sharper than how he had been disparagingly portrayed. He knew that Middle England considered him to be a dullard who, if it had not been for his gifted feet, would have been a nobody. So he played along with it while quietly laughing at his supercilious detractors.
Long before he was 40 he owned and managed his own successful brand and was guaranteed a welcome in the most important houses of England, Europe and the USA. The last person from the British Isles who achieved that was Oscar Wilde, a different type of genius from a different age who also had ideas above himself and was consumed by the English establishment.
There are several reasons why I set little store by the UK’s honours system, but I have no wish to denigrate it in the eyes of the many in our country who value it. Once upon a time it might have mattered a little and brought some cheer into the lives of ordinary people whose quiet nobility might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Whatever value it might once have had, though, was eroded by the vapid nihilism of Tony Blair and all governments that have followed his. Since then we have seen these honours deployed as bribes in exchange for support and money. David Cameron used his patronage over them to reward almost an entire household of political jesters and lickspittles.
David Beckham’s private email correspondence revealed also that he might have been willing to speak out for the Union during the referendum on Scottish independence. In this he finds himself in good company. And few among those Scottish Labour stalwarts who were curiously passionate about the Union have not now been ennobled.
Indeed, those poor deluded fools in the Labour Party in Scotland who didn’t get a bauble last time around seem to be desperately trying to ensure that they will have earned one at the end of the second independence referendum.
Each year brings us dozens more knights of the realm and you find yourself wondering how many of them, just like Beckham, have spent their adult lives desperately seeking these resoundingly empty trinkets. What pointlessness. What bleak desperation.
Yet in that insufferable world where such things are held to be of value, they should give Beckham his knighthood for he deserves it more than most. He has been an unstinting charitable fundraiser – give or take the odd free private jet – and has inspired many young people from backgrounds similar to his.
Some say this won’t happen as it’s been revealed that he wanted it too much. But many of our lords and knights only became so after a lifetime of base obsequiousness.
Beckham and his struggle to be recognised as an equal by those whose company he seeks reveals the sad and ruthless nature at the heart of this system. They exist to complete the job that the Olympic Games and the business of royal births, marriages and deaths and military adventurism do. They are designed to ensure that we all look the other way as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in this land of plenty.
And while these honours continue to make normally sensible people ridiculously grateful, social and cultural inequality will continue to thrive.
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