Spice Girls: The Story of the World’s Greatest Girl Band reveals how Victoria and David Beckham first met
The Spice Girls rocketed to international fame in the 90s — but for Victoria Beckham, meeting her future husband David didn’t go off as smoothly as many might think.
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The Spice Girls were five fierce independent and ambitious young women who were propelled to international fame in the 90s. In Spice Girls: The Story of the World’s Greatest Girl Band, Sean Smith tells the story of how super-couple Posh and Becks first started dating.
SPICE ALL OVER THE WORLD
Considering the publicity storm that surrounded the Spice Girls, Victoria somehow managed to keep David Beckham a secret from the world for a precious couple of months.
The week before the 1997 Brit Awards, Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller, who was a big Manchester United fan, asked Victoria if she would like to accompany him to watch his team play Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. The finer points of the game were lost on Victoria but afterwards she joined Simon in the VIP lounge and was thoroughly bored while everyone talked about the match.
The other drawback was that she had forgotten to put in her contact lenses, which she had started wearing as a teenager, and was peering foggily about the room when Simon suddenly introduced her to David.
‘It was the moment I was waiting for and I blew it,’ David would later recall, claiming that he had lost his bottle.
Did Simon Fuller have some sort of cunning plan to pair off Victoria and the most promising footballer in the country? He almost certainly did, although not even he could have foreseen what would evolve from that first meeting.
Pop columnist Rick Sky observed, ‘Fuller is a very Machiavellian person. I don’t think he would see that as a negative thing particularly.’
Victoria thought David was a good-looking bloke, from what she could vaguely see, but was too busy to dwell on their fleeting encounter. Two weeks after the Brits, she met him again when Simon took her and Melanie C to watch United play Sheffield Wednesday at Old Trafford. As a lifelong Liverpool fan, Melanie really did know about football, even if the rivalry between her team and United gave the home supporters the chance to boo her loudly.
After the match David was more forward when he saw Victoria in the Players Lounge. He chatted to her before blurting out an invitation to dinner. At the time, it was too difficult to settle on a date, so Victoria asked for his number, saying she’d call him. David, fearing the brush-off, insisted she give him hers. She did.
As she left, she uttered the famous remark that would have been unthinkable coming from the mouth of Victoria Adams before she became a world-famous Spice Girl: ‘If you don’t ring me, I’m going to kick you in the bollocks the next time I see you.’
David called the following day, and twenty-four hours later they went on their first date. They were both very recognisable so it was impossible to know where to go for a discreet evening, even on a quiet Monday. They met in an Essex pub car park before spending the evening chatting to Melanie C at her flat. The important thing was that the awkward first date had been successfully negotiated, although nothing more happened than a goodnight peck on the cheek.
They agreed to talk on the phone while Victoria continued to live the hectic life of a Spice Girl, flying to New York the day after. David and Victoria clicked immediately. They understood each other. It may be a cliche but they had a huge amount in common. They came from working-class family backgrounds, were single-minded in their ambitions, had overcome a natural shyness, were not rocket scientists but were very smart about their own identities and their place in the world, and they laughed at the same things.
All those reasons allowed them to forge a relationship quickly – and they fancied each other. Victoria did have one problem. David wasn’t dating anyone but she had a steady boyfriend, a florist called Stuart Bilton. Technically she had gone out with David behind Stuart’s back but she rectified the situation promptly and finished with him. He had been on a skiing trip when she had her first date with David but she was a free agent before they had taken it further. One reason why so many stars date each other is that they recognise the pressures of being a celebrity and what they have gone through to achieve that status.
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The boys in the background of the Spice Girls weren’t around for long after their girlfriends became so famous. Mel B and Richard Meyer split, as did Emma and Mark Verghese. Geri’s romance with Porsche-driving Giovanni Laporta was fleeting and now Victoria and Stuart were over, even though her parents really liked him. At this time, Melanie C seemed not to have a boyfriend. Perhaps Simon was trying another footballing trick when stories started appearing about Emma with the Liverpool and England striker Robbie Fowler, which soon fizzled out. Over the years more stories would appear about who Emma might or might not be dating than any of the other Girls. Robbie was one of the Liverpool footballers who, around this time, the press labelled ‘Spice Boys’, which reflected the blossoming celebrity status of a number of players. They featured on the front covers of magazines, endorsed fashion labels and indulged in what the media gleefully portrayed as bad behaviour.
Simon quickly caught on to the earning capacity of these impressionable young men and, for a while, took on the management of Steve McManaman, one of the most gifted and photogenic players of the era. Melanie C said he was one of her favourite players.
Recognising the commercial appeal of football may or may not have influenced Simon in aligning the Spice Girls with that world, although he tired of being so close to it: ‘I remember thinking, Ooh, that could work,’ he said later.
‘But it turned out not to be my scene. The people in the football world are not the kind I want to mix with.’
That would not stop him forging a lucrative alliance with David Beckham in the years to come.
This is an edited extract from Spice Girls: The Story of the World’s Greatest Girl Band by Sean Smith, published by HarperCollins and now available in all good bookstores and online.
Originally published as Spice Girls: The Story of the World’s Greatest Girl Band reveals how Victoria and David Beckham first met