David Beckham was 'like an addict' when he met Victoria

01 October 2023 , 23:01

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The couple in 1999 - the year they tied the knot - at a Whitney Houston concert at Wembley Arena (Image: Getty Images)

David Beckham was so smitten with his new girlfriend Victoria he would drive for hours just to grab a few minutes with her.

The couple, friends and family lay bare in a documentary the lengths the besotted footballer went to in order to see the pop star, as they approach their 25th wedding anniversary next year. The pair, who became known globally as “Posh and Becks”, tell how they met in 1997 after a Manchester United game.

Beckham had already told pals he wanted to marry her after seeing the singer in a music video on TV. On their second meeting, also at a match, she wrote her number on a plane ticket she had used to get to the game and told him “you’d better call me”. He took Posh by her word, spending hours on the phone to her.

Beckham, 48, said: “There was something there just straight away. It was just like OK, this is it and it’s going to move fast.” His team-mates remember his obsession. Gary Neville, one of six talented United players known as the class of 1992, said: “He was on the phone to Victoria every second. He would stay on the phone till one in the morning. “It was like an addict. He’d drive four hours to spend 20 minutes with her.”

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The couple at a fashion show in June at Versailles, France (Corbis via Getty Images)

David Beckham was 'like an addict' when he met Victoria

David Beckham's red card during the World cup game against Argentina in 1998 (AP)

And ex-team-mate Paul Scholes added: “We knew David was p***ing the manager [Alex Ferguson] off. I think he was probably going down to London at times when he possibly shouldn’t have been. And the manager wouldn’t have that.” They would meet in car parks to avoid media attention, and had their first kiss in Beckham’s BMW, bought when he got a £50,000 Adidas deal.

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Their relationship became so intense that his parents, Ted and Sandra, feared it could damage his career. Sandra recalled the phone going in the middle of night when Victoria was on tour abroad ahead of big matches for United. She said: “We’d be staying at his house and three o’clock in the morning the phone would ring. I’d answer and say he is in bed asleep and they’d want to talk. Me being the protective mum thought, ‘you shouldn’t really be ringing this time in the morning’. But how can you tell them, they are adults.

“We were worried he would lose all he worked for. Because football came first and all of a sudden it wasn’t.” But the ex-England captain, who would become notorious for his red card in a 1998 World Cup game against Argentina, does not regret a moment of those heady early days. He said: “I didn’t care when I saw her. How much I saw her. If it was me driving to London to see her for seven minutes I did it.

Everything about Victoria I loved. I didn’t know she was the strong woman that she was, and I liked that. “She is a strong, strong woman, she can be a pain in the a**e. She was this morning!” But on his attraction to her, he added: “Maybe it was because I wanted her to look after me.”

Becks said he clashed with Sir Alex over his advertising deals and a new agent he took on. He said: “I wanted a career after football, that ate away at the manager, he just wanted me to be the best footballer I could be and be married to a local girl that wasn’t a superstar.” In a rare interview, Sir Alex revealed: “He changed, there is no doubt about that. The media attention and becoming a celebrity was different from what I wanted.

“Getting David to keep his feet on the ground became more difficult.” By January 1998, the couple were engaged. They had their first child, Brooklyn, now 24, in March 1999 and married in a castle just outside Dublin four months later in July – he was just 23 and she was 24. They went on to have three more children, Romeo, 21, Cruz, 18, and Harper, 12.

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They have weathered challenges, including allegations by several women of affairs, and while Beckham has not taken legal action, he has described becoming “accustomed to reading more and more ludicrous stories about my private life” and maintains he is happily married.

Documentary director Fisher Stevens insisted the rumours of infidelity by Beckham will be tackled. Stevens said: “It wasn’t pleasant, but we got into it. For me, I approached it as ‘How did your marriage stay together?’ You’ll see how he responds. I talked with both of them about the difficulties they went through.”

The pair remain hugely supportive of each other. Only last week Beckham attended 49-year-old Victoria’s Paris Fashion Week show. Speaking on Saturday about why their relationship still works, he said: “It’s a bit of give and take, always. And marriage is hard work. We’re busy... “We have four kids who are always going in different directions, but you have to prioritise your time with each other. That’s what we’ve always done, and it seems to be working.”