VICTORIA'S SECRETS

Mrs Beckham presents her own show - and just when it seems she can't think of a more inane question to ask, she manages it reports TOM LEONARD from London.

He was sent off for fouling in Manchester United game in Brazil, she let slip that he likes to wear her knickers, and they both are back on the front cover of OK! magazine, stealing the limelight at someone else's wedding.

It has been just another week in which David and Victoria Beckham have consolidated their brand position as Posh 'n Becks, Britain's most famous celebrity couple.

There will be some who think they already know quite enough about the cross-dressing footballer and his Spice Girl wife.

However, next week the last media vehicle left unexploited in the couple's relentless path to superstardom will finally shift into gear as Mrs Beckham presents her own television show.

Victoria's Secrets, a celebrity interview show which raises a question mark about Channel 4's remit to provide "ambitious and imaginative" programming to Britons, is Mrs Beckham's first foray into what she hopes will be a successful new career in television.

Anyone who has never understood why the Spice Girls have done so well will be similarly mystified why Channel 4 ever let Mrs Beckham in front of a camera.

Her impressive interview list includes Elton John, Vinnie Jones, Richard E Grant, Roger Moore, Michael Parkinson and her husband but she miraculously fails to get anything interesting out of them.

Perched in the back seat of a limo or a plane, Mrs Beckham zips from one celebrity interview to another in a quest to "reveal a different side" to herself and her fellow stars, generally asking them how they cope with fame.

"I'm really nervous. I don't know what to ask anybody", she confides. For once with the Beckhams this is no overstatement.

If there are any surprises in the 45-minute programme, it is that just when it seems she cannot possibly think of a more inane question to ask, she manages it. Having asked a gossip columnist if he gets stories about celebrity romances by being in the bedroom at the time, she goes to see the footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones on the set of his latest film.

"Is your trailer as big as Brad's [Pitt]?" she asks, adding without irony that he must "find it hard to be taken seriously as an actor".

Mrs Beckham goes straight for the jugular with Sir Elton. "So what kind of music do you like the best?" When he asks her what she thinks of the new album by the former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, she looks terrified.

She asks Michael Parkinson for some interviewing tips. "I've got to ask you about sexual chemistry," she says, presumably remembering at least one thing from the producer's briefing.

As a grand finale, she shares a sofa with a bandana-wearing Mr Beckham, admitting that "he reckons I'm not going to be any good at interviewing".

Having previously confessed she knows little about football - "I know what he [Beckham] does. He kind of bends the ball that way or something, you know." - she tries a different tack: "When did you realise you were going to be really famous?", "When did you get asked for your first autograph?" and the best of the lot - "Who has the most clothes, you or your wife?"

Sadly, she can't keep up the grilling for more than 20 seconds. Breaking into screeches of laughter that "I can't do it any more" she lunges across the sofa, flinging her arms round his neck.

There is no one-to-one meeting with the only star about whom Mrs Beckham has something interesting to say.

On her way to interview the fashion designer Valentino in Italy, she confides: "I'm going to ask him if the supermodel Naomi Campbell is really a complete bitch.

"Because he must know her pretty well and every time I've met her she's been a complete bitch but I'm the only one that admits it. But she is a nasty cow."

But she never plucks up the courage to mention Campbell, saving the programme from suddenly becoming entertaining, and instead says nice things about the designer's curtains.

But Mrs Beckham, who at one point remarks with satisfaction that her purple Louis Vuitton purse matches the plane she is about to board, is at pains to stress there is another side to her frivolous shopaholic image.

"People think I'm being serious and I really am having a laugh," she says at one point. "I do like going shopping but people think it's all there is to me. But there's a lot more."

She appears nervous throughout but Mrs Beckham is only caught off guard when a woman accosts her in a Sainsbury's car-park and tells her that Jesus loves her. "Oh thank you", she simpers.

Her penetrating gaze is turned on the press, namely Piers Morgan, editor of the Mirror. "He is one man who is incredibly powerful - it's really scary."

Morgan returns the sycophancy. "You've created a fantastic image which is awesomely powerful," he tells her. Inside the Mirror's office, she gently berates Morgan for being nasty to her husband during the World Cup and attacks press coverage of herself: "I could have a nervous breakdown. Every day it's something new", she observes.

But she still wants to know why a story about her weight - a recent Mirror front page splash - could be more important than wars and riots.

"We're in a celebrity age," says Morgan, which appears to be all the answer she needs. He does not add that it is an age which swallows celebrities and quickly spits them out. But Mrs Beckham, who is also trying to become an actress, gets some pertinent advice on that subject from the actor Richard E Grant when she tells him she hates seeing big stars going downhill.

"In 20 years time when you and David are doing Snow White in panto, I'm going to get this tape," he replies "and say 'Remember when you didn't want to be tired old has-beens?'."

1/11/2000

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