In nineteen ninety four, Victoria Adams answered a call out in a magazine looking for a new girl band. While her voice needed work, she had the IP factor, with management praising her grace and sophistication.
And I wanted to sing and dance, but again I wasn't the best. It was always just about working really, really hard.
From there, The Spice Girls was born and Victoria shot to international fame as posh Spice. Renowned for her strict no smiling rule, Victoria became misunderstood by the public.
I think people probably see me as a miserable patty bitch. To be completely honest in a.
Romance made in nineties Heaven, Victoria's high profile marriage to football superstar David Beckham defined the era.
They were both famous in their own right, but when they came together, it went and they became twenty times as famous, you know, as a couple.
With it, though, came intense media scrutiny and wards of paparazzi following their every move.
I went from being a regular teenager to all of a sudden being on the cover of every magazine, every tabloid newspaper, constantly being talked about. Herds of paparazzi and fans outside my family home, and it happened almost overnight.
As well as a string of Chuning scandals.
The chemistry between David and I were so strong that everyone was aware, and people weren't happy, obviously.
Because I was being very unprofessional and he's a married man.
I was very very upset because as much as he's telling me this is not true, I swear on our unborn babies life this is not true. I am still reading. He had a huge erection as he stood up and walked away from where we'd been rolling about for the last three hours. And I'm reading this seven months pregnant, and David is saying yes, but I don't even know who this person is.
We are journalists Kay Amy and Sophie Torbat and this is our new series Unspoken, where we bring you the unspoken stories behind the biggest pop culture headlines to rock the nineties and early noughties. Ever since the Beckham doco dropped back in October, we have been so.
Keen to bring this story to you.
And while the doco was much loved, one criticism of it was there wasn't enough posh spice, So that is what we're bringing you today a deep dive on Victoria Beckham. Yeah, and she is someone who is quite misunderstood by the general public because often we see her in paparazzi photos where she's frowning or pouting. She often never smiles, and a lot of people were quite surprised that she seemed to have such a great sense of humour in the documentary.
She was so iconic in that doco, and that's just what's left people wanting more of her. I suppose Victoria is known more for her image rather than her personality. Yeah, and I suppose we've found out that her personality is a lot more interesting than that image that she puts out there. Yeah. Well, despite being admired and loved by generation of young girls in the nineties, Victoria said that
her childhood was in complete contrast. So she grew up as Victoria Adams in Hertfordshire with her parents Jackie and Anthony Adams, sister Luise and brother Christian. Now her mum was an insurance clerk and hairdresser, whilst her father founded an electronics wholesale business and the company was a big success and with it it brought a comfortable lifestyle for
the Adams family. It's only just struck me now that she was part of the Adams family, because of course that was a television show about a scary family growing up, and we've seen Wednesday Adams on Netflix. I do wonder if that was part of the reason why she was bullied so much at school. She has said that jealousy was a big part of why she wasn't popular at school.
In an interview during her two thousand and four documentary Being Victoria Beckham, she said that she was targeted for her privileged upbringing.
Here's what she said.
I never really fitted in at school, partly because I came from quite privileged family. My dad, when he first started up his company, his ambition was to have a Rolls Royce and he said, I'm going to have a Rolls Royce and he did, and it haunted me. But he did have one.
So Victoria's dad would drop her off at school in the Rolls Royce, which antagonized the bullies even more. And perhaps this is why she was so funny about it when David brought it up in the recent doco. Yeah, it's clear that it is a sow point for her. It is quite confusing though, because at our school growing up, I think if you were to rock up in a Rolls Royce, everyone would be jealous of you, but in a good way.
They'd want to have a ride in it.
I think it would depend on the student though, because I can imagine if someone wasn't very popular and they were being picked up in a Rolls Royce, that would stand out, and people don't tend to like people that are different at school. I was surprised to hear that Victoria wasn't very confident about her appearance at school because she was arguably the most glamorous spic scale.
Let's have a listen to what she said.
When I was at school, I was a complete minga. I had permed hair the lot, not the best looking.
He always laughed when I hear the word minga, because it's not a term that we use here in Australia. Yeah, it's a bit of a blast from the past as well now. As well as not being confident in her appearance, she also struggled to make friends and said that she never really fit in at school, and Victoria's mum, Jackie, said she was always aware that in the school holidays no one ever phoned for Victoria or asked her to go out and play dates or come around.
I bet they're regretting that now.
It was a similar story for David Beckham growing up, because he didn't have a large group of friends at school and it was only until he joined Manchester United that he forged some of those strong friendships that went on into his adulthood. So I wonder if that's why he and Victoria were so besotted with one another and became each other's worlds when they did finally meet. Well,
they clearly connected on that. When Victoria turned sixteen, she did start attending Lane's Dance School, where she studied dancing modeling, and she was inspired by the musical film Fame and had her heart set on a musical career. So it was at this school that Victoria started developing insecurities that would follow her for the rest of her life. In a two thousand and four documentary, Victoria said for the first time she became self conscious about her weight.
Here's what she said.
I first remember starting to get very self conscious about the way that I look at my figure when I was sixteen and I went to Lane's Dancing School, they do weigh you, they do make you very conscious of your weight. And as much as part of me would actually sit here and say that's terrible because you are making people have eating disorders, one side of me says that, but the other side of me says, yes, but to be a dancer, you do have to be small. It's
hard and it's horrible. And basically she was probably actually preparing us for what we were going to be told when we left. Some of the girls at these dancing schools eat tissues. I mean not just anorexic or bollimik, they eat tissues that I mean, the things that people try to lose weight is unbelievable.
During the documentary, producers also interviewed Betty Lane, who's the principal of Lane's dance school, and she said, if you're going into the specific field where your foresake is of importance, then we have to bring it to your attention. She continued saying, I would not say that Victoria was fat while she was training, but she did possibly need to lose some pounds during her time here, as most of
them do. Now. As part of the documentary, Victoria came back to visit the school and hand out awards to the current students, and it was so awkward because despite Victoria giving back to the school while she was at the peak of her fame, Betty was quick to point out that there were a lot more girls with more talent than Victoria that are doing less than her, So she was referring that Victoria simply got lucky.
With her career.
Gee, she sounds like such a lovely world, not only commenting on a sixteen year old's appearance, but then such a backhanded comment.
She kind of sounds like, you know, the show dance Mums. Yes, she does well.
Victoria herself, she has always been self deprecating about her singing ability, and she really plays into the joke, which is something I really like about her. She's even done skits about her microphone always being turned off and making sure it's turned on during interviews, so she has some fun with it. And she knows that pop stardom is more about branding and star quality than simply your voice, and she's always been adamant that she's worked really hard
to get there. In a twenty twenty interview, she said, I wanted to go on the stage, and I wanted to sing and dance, but again I wasn't the best. It was always just about working really, really hard. I was very ambitious, very determined, never afraid to put in the hard work, and very focused. Now I didn't realize this, but Victoria's first real boyfriend was not David Beckham. It was actually Mark would So she was just fourteen when she met him for the first time at her parents' house,
of all places. So Mark was working for a parent's company as an alarm engineer and he was on the job fixing their electrics when the chance meeting occurred. So they were together for six years, with Mark even living with Victoria in her parents' home in Hertfordshire Well. It was at this time, in nineteen ninety four, when Victoria spotted an advertisement in trade magazine The Stage, looking for singers to audition for a girl band, and shortly after
Victoria auditioned for The Spice Girls. Mark really wanted to lock down this relationship and he proposed to Victoria. I love how quick he was on that, Like shit, he knew that he needed to lock that down. But even so, it's not like you're really getting any guarantee because joining a band like the spice girls. That's going to change
your whole life. To be fair, they had been together for six years, so perhaps it was just the next step for them now despite not being married yet, Victoria began calling an Victoria Adams would and the name even appeared on early Spy Scales merchandise. I wonder how much that merchandise would be worth now, surely a lot now that you say it, I swear I have seen that name on merch before. It definitely doesn't have the ring of Beckham, does it, though Adam's will, No.
It doesn't.
I wonder if the management team behind the Spy Scales was pissed off about this, because normally, if you're in a girl group or a boy band, they want you to appear single so that people want to date you when you're really enticing. So it's pretty interesting that she even added the second name onto her own.
Well, the engagement didn't last long.
Mark was left heartbroken when Victoria ended their six year relationship just as the band was taking off.
As you do.
She did open up about the breakup on Channel four, saying it wasn't the right person for me. I wasn't enjoying myself so that had to end. She did admit she didn't give the ring back.
Here's what she said. I didn't give him the ring back.
Eye if I've still got it because it was a wicked dream. It's not horrible.
I love that she calls it a wicked ring. This just adds to Victoria's quota of engagement rings because it's been widely publicized that David has given Victoria fifteen engagement rings over their twenty four year marriage. So really, if we're doing the math, she has sixteen if we add Mark's ring. I really want to see what this first engagement ring looks like, because I'm sure the other fifteen that Beckham has given her has shit all over it.
Poor Mark. Now.
At the time of their breakup, things were pretty cordial in the media. Mark had only nice things to say about Victoria. In nineteen ninety seven, he told the people that it was a very special relationship, but that part of my life is over. It's sad because we were together for a long time. But she got what she always wanted and I'm proud of her now. Things did turn nasty, though, when Mark gave a paid interview to a newspaper saying that he had sex with Victoria on
a train. Victoria said that she'd lived a very shelter life until that point and couldn't believe what she was reading in the paper, and said it was particularly horrifying for her to see her dad opening the paper that morning. God, that would be absolutely mortifying. She said in her two thousand and four documentary, I wouldn't even mind, but it didn't even happen. Most people have a price, which is really sad.
Now.
In the same interview, Victoria also seemingly dismissed their relationship, saying, for some reason we got engaged. He was an alarm engineer. If only he stayed in that cupboard that I met him in my mom and dad's house. Now, Mark was really hurt by these comments, and he did seek revenge. So he appeared on a two thousand and five documentary called Victoria Beckham's Secrets, and this is where he spoke
candidly about their sex life. So he told the documentary that he took the singer's virginity at seventeen and claims she was addicted to sex and I quote went like an express train during a romp in the toilets of a train. How disrespectful. I hate the wording took the singer's virginity as if it's something that you can take from someone, and just trying to phrase her as this sex maniac. We know back in the early two thousands that this was something that wasn't seen in a positive light.
It was very slut shaming. Yeah.
Ahead of the documentary airing, a Channel five spokesperson said, as they always say, revenge is a dish best served cold. Mark has never spoken before in public about his relationship with Victoria, but feels it is time to set the record straight. She has made him look foolish in front of the cameras. They actually dated for six years and split up shortly before she started dating David Beckham in nineteen ninety seven. Mark was quite hurt by what she
said and doesn't intend sparing Victoria's blushes. What a way to promote your documentary.
But what a poor guy.
He was hurt, so he decided to slut shame Victoria.
Like what a dick heare all.
Like, he was completely jealous when it came out that she was dating David Beckham. Yeah, Well, as we touched on, Victoria spotted the advertisement for a girl group in the Stage magazine, and the band was the brainchild of father and son duo Chris and Bob Herbert, who arranged a series of auditions in central London in nineteen ninety four when he noticed there was a huge gap in the
market for a girl group. I was surprised to hear the only four hundred women responded to the ad and audition for the group, and the auditions were an open call, with the girls scored on a range of categories during the audition process, including dance, singing, looks and personality. It
sounds like some sort of Miss Universe competition now. Victoria said she was the only one to use the piano in her audition and belt it out a cabaret performance whilst the other girls were all singing Queen of the Night from Whitney Houston. Now. While Victoria's voice wasn't as strong as the other girls, Chris liked that she was graceful, classic and sophisticated.
Now.
As for Jerry halliwell, she almost didn't make the band, so Chris invited her along to the audition and just hours.
Before she pulled out.
This was because she had got really badly burnt on a holiday in Spain and it made it really hard for her to dance and sing.
Poor Ginger.
No, So, despite not attending the initial audition, Jerry went out to a bar for a few drinks and she proceeded to call Chris and Bob Herbert and demanded to be included in the callback audition. Now she was granted that wish and made sure to stand out at the next audition. Melbe said Jerry looked like a mad, eccentric nutter from another planet, just what you want to look like at an audition.
Now.
Melc was also a late call up, so she only became a Spy Scale after another performer by the name of Leanne Morgan was removed from the process. So Morgan was twenty three at the time and was deemed too old to join the group because the Herberts wanted the spy Scales to be younger than that.
That just blows my mind.
Twenty three too old now. Another singer called Michelle Stevenson briefly became an official member, but that came to a quick end. So according to Chris, Michelle was fired from the Spy Skirls because she wasn't fitting in and didn't Gel with the rest of the band. Victoria backed this statement up, saying Michelle didn't have.
The work ethic needed to be a Spice Girl.
She said she couldn't be asked to put in the same amount of work that the other Spice Girls were. Now, Michelle, of course says that she does regret the decision because she's not a multi millionaire, but at the same time, when she left the group, she knew she was doing the right thing, and she still thinks it was the right thing now. Once Melby, Emma Bunton and Jerry Halliwell were officially selected, they became members of a band called Touch.
But in nineteen ninety five, the band left their original management and teamed up with musical manager Simon Fuller and signed to deal with Virgin Records, so they underwent a complete rebrand and were named the Spy Skirls.
Wow.
I did not realize they were originally called Touch. That seems like such a shit name in comparison. I wonder if it's only because we know the name as it is now. I'm just surprised that the management didn't make Melby and Melse change their name.
Having two members called mel.
Yeah, now Victoria said that they had lost confidence with their original managers, Bob and Chris, as everything seemed to be moving so slowly, and they really like Simon Fuller
because he had a good reputation in the industry. In nineteen ninety six, they released their debut album, Spice, which became a worldwide commercial hit, with the album peaking at number one in more than seventeen countries and it was certified multi platinum in twenty seven countries, and the album has since sold thirty million copies worldwide.
Now, I would have thought that.
A highly paid marketing team would have devised the Spice Girl's nicknames. So over the years we've come to know them as Baby, Scary, Sporty, Ginger, and Posh. But Melb broke the illusion, telling the Huffington Post that there was actually a magazine editor who gave them their nicknames. So she said, it was actually a lazy journalist that couldn't be bothered to remember all of our names, so he just gave us nicknames. And we were like, oh, well that kind of works. I don't mind my name. Do
you like your name Baby Posh? We were like, let's just go with it. The journalist in question was Peter Lorraine, who ran UK magazine and TV show Top of the Pops, and he devised the nicknames for a feature story that he wrote on the band that ran in July at nineteen ninety six, and as you said, Kate, he developed the names out of pure convenience. Peter said, Posh was the first one to be thought up because Victoria looks pretty sophisticated. The rest were pretty easy because the girl's
characters were already really strong. The names just jumped out at us. We laughed the most when we came up with scary Now. One of Peter's colleagues, Jennifer, actually came up with Melby's name because she said that she was so loud at the photo shoot and tried to take over the whole thing. I always wondered when I was growing up why there was only actually one spice like ging Just spis made sense to me, But I'm like, it doesn't make sense. Shouldn't they be like saffron spice
or cinnamon spice? Is terrible that that only just tweaked for me. Ginger being a spice, I never even thought of that. I thought it as being a description. Victoria really found herself in the Spice Skirls. So in an interview, she said that being around the other Spy Skirls helped her come out of a shell and grow her confidence. Let's write a more of what she said.
Do you know I think because I was so bullied when I was at school, I was very, very shy, a little bit introvert. And when I met the Spice Girls, I met four other girls like me. We were all underdogs in our own way. Individually not that great, but collectively we really worked and we had something very special and most people out there could relate to one of us.
Together.
We then began a mission of girl power. And this was a long time ago. I mean I remember the first time we went to a record company and we said we want to be on the cover of a magazine. We were told, well, girls don't sell magazines. You know, you're never going to find yourself on the cover of a magazine as a girl group. You know, people only want to see boys on magazines. And we began this
mission of girl power. We're saying, you know, we're not just as good as boys, right, ladies, we're better, And we broke barriers and we went on a mission to empower not just girls, but yes, boys as well. And it's okay if you're the underdog, it's okay, if you're not the popular one, it's okay if you're different. It's about embracing who you are and being proud of that.
I forgot that the Spice Girl's mantra was all about girl power and I am so here for that. Well, Victoria said that it's still her mantra in her beauty and fashion line. She's all about girl power and women's succeeding.
Well, we need to.
Get into when Posh met beck so Victoria was at the peak of her career when she met football at David Beckham. At this stage it was Victoria who was really the famous one. So David was only twenty two at the time, while Victoria was twenty three, now the older woman all of one year old. And while David Starr was on the rise, he wasn't yet playing in the first team. However, Victoria was at the peak of
her career with the Spice Girls. Now David's coach at Manchester United, Sir Alex Ferguson was desperate for his players' social lives to be stable, so he didn't want his players out parting on the weekends or hooking up with different girls each week. So ideally Alex Ferguson wanted David to meet a local girl. Pop the question and settled down. He definitely didn't want one of his players dating a
Spice girl. It's pretty wild to hear about the first time that David laid eyes on Victoria because it happened to be when she was appearing on TV. So one night, when David and his teammate Gary Neville were watching TV, the spy Scirls appeared on the screen and David exclaimed to Gary, you see that one. I'm going to marry that one, the posh one in the black dress. Here's more of what David said back in two thousand and two about seeing Victoria for the first time.
I searing that that cat suit, and it done it for me.
That was it.
I was gone completely.
So I think it was the hair that done it for.
Me at first.
I love his voice and the way he said it was what done it for me.
A lot of people say that his voice ruins his looks, but I kind of like it.
I feel like it adds to his character.
Now when interviewed on the Beckham documentary, Gary Neville said that a lot of guys have done that in their lifetime before, but they don't fucking end up with them.
Yeah.
Think about how many hot guys you've seen in film clips or on movies, but you never are actually going to get a chance with them.
Yeah, but not everyone's David Beckham, No they're not.
Well. Fast forward to March nineteen ninety seven and Victoria and Melsey aka Sporty Spice were invited to a Manchester United game and appeared on the pitch at halftime. Word quickly spread around the club that they were there, so before the game started, one player rushed into the clubrooms to tell the rest of the teammates that two Spice girls were in the building. So David quickly asked which ones,
and to his delight, Posh Spice was in attendance. So he really turned it on for Victoria on the pitch, he kicked a goal during the game, and it was actually Victoria's manager who introduced her to David, so he told her that she should have a famous boyfriend and it'd be great for her career. So when they got a chance to finally meet later in the player's lounge. David was so nervous so he waved from the other side of the bar and could only muster a quick hello.
He ended up anguishing over the missed opportunity for days and was gutted. It seemed like Victoria really wanted a chance to see him again, as the following week she attended another Manchester United game.
And this is.
Despite the fact that Victoria quite openly admits that she's not into for.
Shelda still doesn't like it.
No, she said, I'd seen pictures of him in magazines and he's obviously a really good looking boy. The fact I went to games was kind of Some would say to stalk him, I would say, to see him. So she ended up running into him at the player's lounge again, and this time David was standing with his family. She said all of the other footballers were at the bar, but he was talking to his parents, which she loved as she's very close to her family as well. Now by this stage, David had had a few drinks and
thought I'm going to try and get her number. They talked for an hour and Victoria ended up writing her phone number on the aeroplane ticket that she'd used to board her flight to Manchester with It's really cute, because David said he still has that ticket that is very cute now. Both Victoria and David said that the first time they spoke, there was a connection straight away and they fancied each other immediately. They both knew things were
going to move fast. In an open letter Victoria wrote for Vogue in twenty sixteen, she said it was love at FeAs site with David, and in her two thousand and two documentary she said, I do believe in love at first sight, and I did know from the first time that I met him that I was going to end up with him. Now, at the request of Victoria's management, the couple tried to keep their relationship under wraps, so they were told not to get photographed together as it
would cause a media storm. So their friends had to get really crafty, explaining that they had to do a mission impossible to get David over to Victoria's house unnoticed by the paparazzi. So one close friend would meet David at a chain of restaurants in the UK called Little Chef, and David would park his car there and they would then sneak him in the boot with a blanket over him.
They would then.
Drive right past the press outside Victoria's house and he would go through the back gate and run so he wasn't photographed. Now, many of the couple's first dates were in car parks, and Victoria insisted that it's not a CD as it sound. In fact, she said that David was so shy that for the first few dates he didn't even try to kiss her. David said that he thought Posh was hoping for a kiss the first time,
but he was just too shy to do it. Their first kiss finally ended up happening in David's BMW in a car park. So romantic. You've got to remember, though, as we mentioned, she was the biggest celebrity in this and I remember in the doco she pointed out that she wasn't like some girls who want to be waged. She didn't really need David for fame. She had her own fame. Yeah, but I mean it's still you still want a guy to kiss you first.
No, you don't want to be the one making all the moves.
Yeah, but you can understand why David would have been so nervous. It confuses me that they had all of their dates in car parks, because you'd think that there's more chance of the press spotting them in the car park instead of behind closed doors, especially if there's these steamy makeout sessions happening in the car.
Yeah.
I thought the same thing too.
Blacked out windows, you guys. Yeah, but tru wouldn't they be able to follow the car like? That was the whole point, And they had to David in so he could even see her. I mean, they were clearly very clever the way they did it now despite being previously engaged. Victoria said that she'd never felt this way before about anyone, and she said that everything felt so right and she wanted to tell the world, but she had to hold back. David first told Victoria that he loved her at her parents' house,
and from that day on their relationship was endgame. From all reports, David was absolutely infatuated by Victoria. His teammate Gary Neville said David was like an attic, spending every waking minute on the phone to Victoria and doing four hour car journeys just to see her.
For twenty minutes.
So when Victoria was on tour, he would even charter a tiny two seater plane to see her for a few hours and come back. This is giving me Travis Kelcey vibes.
Yeah, it really is now.
Gary said his behavior was starting to piss off their manager, Sir Alex Ferguson. David's mum, Sandra West, also seemed concerned that David's relafelationship with Victoria was going to jeopardize his career. She recalled in the Beckham documentary that when Victoria was away touring in another time zone, she would ring the house at three in the morning before a game just to speak to David. I get where his mum's coming from.
I don't know how I'd feel about this new woman on the scene who starts calling all of the shots and ringing it these really ridiculous times of the day. Because for David, as we touched on, he didn't really have many friends growing up. His whole focus was football, So alarm bells would start ringing that suddenly, what's going to happen with his career? Is this going to go
down the drain? Yeah? Well, Sandra did say, we will worry that he'd lose all that he'd worked for because football came first and then all of a sudden, it wasn't it's crazy to think that Posh and Becks managed to keep this relationship quiet from the press for three months.
It wasn't until.
David bought Victoria a Cartier watch the people started piecing it all together. So the perhaps had snapped a photo of David and Victoria outside her parents' house, and they managed to interview her dad about it. So Victoria's dad tried to keep the cover story going, with the headline reading, they're just good friends. In cis Posh Spice's dad they
call it posh spos mister posh. Now, the first time the public truly saw them as a couple was when they were papped together out in public, with Victoria wearing a black dress and David in pale blue jeans and a black topt. This, yeah, was hot, and this was tabloid gold for the media, with the sports world and pop culture world perfectly colliding now. When breaking the news to the world, one publication wrote, Beckham scores a spy
scale football star on date with Posh Victoria. Another article described their relationship as a romance made in nineties heaven, it continued saying throughout the decade, certain celebrity couples have defined the era, and for our age, there is no more perfect pairing than football ace and spy skirl Dominic Mahoane from the Sun said that they became twenty times
more famous as a couple on their own. Anna Winter also summed it up perfectly in the Beckham doco, saying, when you have two equally charismatic people, it doubles the volume. It puts the heat volume right up well. David's teammate Gary Neville he likened Poshenbeck's popularity to that of Princess Diana and Prince Charles at the time, and that just goes.
To show how big they were now.
While David said he was uncomfortable with the aggression of the paparazzi, he did say he loved being in Posha's world and that it was exciting now. David and Victoria were only together for ten months when David popped the question. According to author Gwen Russell, who wrote a Rise Sir David Beckham, football celebrity legend, the couple floated the idea of getting married when Victoria was over in Los Angeles
for the Spice World premiere movie. Now as soon as she got home, they set the wheels in motion, looking at rings together. According to reports, Victoria told David what her dream ring was, and he had it specially made for her. So this was one of those proposals where both parties very much knew it was happening. In the book, it quotes David as saying, I wasn't nervous at all about getting engaged. We decided a while ago we would make it official this weekend. I got the ring and
was really looking forward to it. But when the moment came, there were a few butterflies now for the proposal itself. They checked into a hotel after one of David's games, and David presented Victoria with thirty roses upon arrival. She was then taken into the room to find it filled with red and yellow lilies. The couple then both got into bathrobes and ordered dinner and champagne to the room.
According to the book, Victoria said, we were sitting in our dressing gowns when David pulled out the ring and got down on one knee and said, will you marry me?
Victoria?
Now, in what was very reminiscent of a royal photo, call on January twenty fifth, nineteen ninety eight, which happened to be the next day after David popped the question. The couple called the press to a hotel in Cheshire to announce their engagement. Despite the frosty January weather. Victoria wore an iconic black miniskirt with a black turtleneck, leather jacket and a cross around her neck. David wore a
matching all black outfit. The couple unveiled the ring to the press, and it was a three carrot Marquez cut diamond on a plain yellow gold band, which was handcrafted by Manchester jewelers Boodle and Dunthorn.
Now.
The ring reportedly cost around eighty five thousand pounds at the time. Victoria told the press, I'm the happiest girl in the world today. I'm with the man I know I'm going to grow old and wrinkly with now. Victoria did have a trick up her sleeve. So as we touched on the spy skills are the pioneers of girl power. So Victoria decided that she wanted to pop the question to David too, so she bought David a fifty thousand pound diamond encrusted gold ring from exclusive jewelry store Van
Cleef and Apples on Rodeo Drive in Hollywood. Victoria reportedly said, I said yes, then produced my own ring and said, don't forget girl power, will you marry me? And David found the stunt very funny.
I love this.
I've always thought, why does a woman have to wear an engagement ring but not a man? And you'd want David Beckham wearing an engagement ring too. You want to lock that down like her ex boyfriend tried to lock her down. Yeah, when you're engaged to arguably the hottest man alive, I think you want him wearing a ring and everyone knowing that he's taken. Now, just before their engagement, David got the call up to play for the English soccer team, and he'd always dreamt of playing for his
country in the World Cup. So when news broke of their engagement, one outlet said whilst they may have found love, finding the time to be together will be a problem, with David setting his sights on the World Cup and Victoria starting on her world tour with the Spice Girls. Now, just six months after getting engaged, the couple fell pregnant with their first child, Brooklyn. In the biography Arise Sir David Beckham, Victoria said, when I told David I was pregnant,
he just art weeping. He must have cried for about an hour, and I had tears running down my face too. It was a very emotional moment for both of us. The baby wasn't planned, so it was a surprise mixed with real delight. I think telling David he was going to be a dad really put things into perspective for him.
Now.
Victoria's timing was rather interesting. She dropped the news to David the night before his infamous red card moment. So David was playing for the English team in the World Cup against Argentina, and it had always been David's dream, as you mentioned, for him to play for his country.
So during the game, Argentinian midfielder Diego Simon committed a foul on David, and after David hit the ground, Diego went to ruffle the back of David's head and David immediately responded by kicking his leg back at Diego, milking it for all that was worth. Diego immediately fell to the ground and subsequently David received a red card for the supposed violent conduct and was sent off for the rest of the match. This was a very dark chapter in David's career, as he was blamed for England being
knocked out of the World Cup. The whole country hated him. The media backlash was intense, with the English public turning on David. One headline from the Daily Mirror read ten heroic Lions, one stupid boy. They even took it a step further publishing a dartboard with David's face as the bullseye. Now he received death threats from fans, bullets in the mail, and an epigy of David was hung outside a pub in London. It's important to remember that he was only
twenty three years old at the time. I was shocked when I heard about this in the doco. I still can't believe that this happened. I know sports stars are really put under the microscope, but I think even in Australia, when we're so passionate about sports, this wouldn't happen here. There was a bit of blame put on Victoria in the documentary because David's teammate and best friend, Gary Neville, said that while David was typically able to switch between
football mode and his personal life. He wished that David had turned his phone off for that match, as the lack of focused may have cost him, and in the documentary, Victoria was quizzed about her decision to reveal this life changing news to David right before the biggest match of his career. She said in that interview that David wanted to leave the game to be with her, and he wasn't allowed to. She continued, I told David the night
before the game. He was so happy, we both were, and there were never any doubts in my mind that I should tell him. I mean, it was what we wanted. He could have not been happier. The director, David Fisher Stevens, did quiz her further, saying, so you tell him right before the biggest game of his life? Did you think it would help him? And Victoria responded, I don't know really. She has said before that she doesn't really know much about soccer, so maybe it was just her being really
excited and also very clueless. Why can't she tell her fiance that she's pregnant. It seems like they're trying to shift the blame onto her when it was actually the British press that hung him out to dry, and then the British public will have the result been different and David had a great game, they might have said, well, good on Posh Fitz, Yeah for revealing the pregnancy news.
I can understand the criticism towards it, though, because sport is so much about the psychological aspects of it, and hearing huge news like that before such an important game is going to have an effect on you emotionally. It could have spurred him on. You just don't know how someone is going to react to that news.
Now.
The couple did break the news of their pregnancy in August nineteen ninety nine, and Victoria was twenty four and David was twenty three.
The paper reported that the baby.
Was not planned and that they will be getting married after the birth. Victoria also confirmed she wouldn't be leaving the band, but taking some time off. Just a few days after Posha's announcement, fellow spy Scale Melby, who was twenty three at the time, also announced she was pregnant
with fiance Jimmy Gualzer. Now Jimmy was a Spice Boy dancer in the group's touring onto The news of two spy Skirls pregnancies out of wedlock led to complaints from parents that the band was corrupting the morals if impressionable young girls who worship them wow, so journalist Sally Banks wrote in The La Times, young girls will get the message that pregnancy out of marriage is okay, even cool. She continued, saying the spy Skirls fans saw their pregnancies
as the ultimate expression of girl power. I get that this was back in the nineties, but I can't believe how fucked some of these quotes are. The idea that it's inconceivable that two engaged women are having a child out of wedlock, as if it's the worst thing that they've ever heard of, and such a terrible influence for their children.
I think it's just reflective of what it was like back.
In the nineties and early two thousands. I mean, we saw the rise of the purity rings. We saw Jessica Simpson coming out and declaring that she was a virgin alongside Britney Spears. So it does make sense that this was happening at that time, it.
Doesn't it right now?
Yeah, Vogue Britain approached David and Victoria to do a pregnancy photo shoot, and Victoria says she was so excited when the request came in as they'd never done something like that together. Now, of course, Victoria's bump took center stage in the photo, and when looking back reminiscing on the photo, Victoria said, I mean, now, would I do a photo shoot with my tummy showing? No, I absolutely wouldn't, But at the time I wasn't nervous. We were in
love and we looked great. We didn't care. I love the fact that in the photo she was wearing her own high street top and trousers, and she said that she was very happy go lucky then, but it's now something that she wouldn't do. It's funny to think that showing the bump was such a big deal back then.
We see pregnancy bumps on Instagram all the time. Now it's just the norm, but there was something so crazy about seeing a woman's pregnant belly on displaying Well, Vogue ended up gifting Victoria and David a blown up copy of this photo, which they hung very proudly in their Manchester apartment.
Now that is where we are going to leave you for today.
In next week's episode, While Victoria's pregnancy looked perfect on the glossy pages of British Vogue, the couple's first cheating scandal was brewing. In next week's show, we discuss Victoria's explosive reaction to those kissing rumors, how Victoria's life changed becoming a mother, and the wedding of the century. Well that is episode one of Unspoken. We really hope that
you have enjoyed it. We will be sharing a bunch of nostalgic clips on our TikTok and Instagram which is at Outspoken Underscore the Underscore podcast.
We would love to know if.
You did enjoy it the show, Please share where you are listening to it from now. This episode was recorded on the traditional land of the Ghana people of the Adelaide Planes.
We pay respect to elders past and present.