David Beckham’s tough message for Harry and Meghan

The sporting star has revealed just how close he is to the royal family, as a hidden Sussexes detail re-emerges.

The World Economic Forum in Davos, the annual piste-adjacent glüwein-chugging get together of the ‘mine’s bigger’-private jet crowd makes for some strange bedfellows.

Mutual fund titans and Mick Jagger. Crypto evangelists and Charlize Theron. Shakira and a scattering of Scandi trade ministers.

Now, we have sometimes-undies model and lad who was once handy with a ball, David Beckham turning up in the Swiss mountain resort town to offer his thoughts on the European Central Bank’s restructuring of debt bond yields.

Oh I’m sorry, no. He was in Davos last week to receive a gong in his role as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and used the opportunity to enthuse about his relationship with Prince William, the Prince of Wales.

Former England's football player and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador David Beckham used the opportunity n Davos to enthuse about his relationship with Prince William. Picture: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

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By the sounds of things, the tattooed sports star is so tight with the future King he’s the Wales family’s go-to for an airport lift next time an all-inclusive five-dayer to Magaluf out of Luton.

“Whenever the Prince of Wales sends me a message and says ‘I need you to do this, be there’ it is always a yes,” Beckham said of his charity work with William and that one time the prince asked him to come around and help him knock up an Ikea bookcase.

“Over the years, I’ve done a lot with the Prince of Wales. I’ve always been there, when he asked me to get involved with things.

“Whether it be veterans, whether it be the London Air Ambulance Service … to be involved in that, has always been a yes for me.”

Beckham said he’s “done a lot with the Prince of Wales” over the years. Picture: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP

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Beckham’s royal connections go further still with him having been officially tapped by King Charles to sign on as an ambassador for The King’s Fondation.

Said the former England player: “I always get emotional talking about anything that I do with our royal family, because I’ve always been a huge royalist. I was brought up in a household that adored and loved everything that came with the Royal Family”.

There are two key takeaways of David Does Davos here – if Beckham fawns over Crown Inc any harder in his quest for that knighthood he’s been a-hankerin’ after, he’s going to do his lip-puckering muscles some damage.

Also, every time he pops up to kiss the kingly ring, it’s a reminder of the other prince he no longer has anything to do with.

Watching Beckham just oh-so-casually mention that William messages him only underlines the reported falling out between he and wife Victoria and Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Prince Harry and Meghan have reportedly fallen out with David and Victoria Beckham. Picture: Colombian Vice President's Office/Getty

Time was, they were all chummy chums. When Meghan traded Toronto for London, it was the Spice Girl turned fashion designer turned Netflix breakout star with her own series in the pipeline who was reportedly on hand to furnish her with the necessary advice like where to get the best spider venom facial (well, facials anyway) and how to find the Harrods downstairs loos.

For a while there, in 2018 and 2019, the couples’ country homes were in the same area and they moved in similar social circles.

Then, things came apart at the seams, with the Sussexes alleged to have accused the Beckhams of leaking about them to the hated press, leaving David Beckham, per the Daily Mail, “absolutely bloody furious”.

It was the end of a beautiful, mutually PR-able friendship.

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Now, with Beckham’s Davos comments, Harry and Meghan are having to watch their former chum luxuriate in the honeyed glow of royal favour while they suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Los Angeles fortune.

The duchess’ giddy return to Instagram on January 1 was meant to bode big, bright things and yet less than a month later, 2025 has so far proven to be a bruising, bummer of a year.

The Sussexes’ well-intentioned efforts to support those devastated by the Los Angeles fires have only seen them come in quite shellacking.

When they visited the area destroyed by the Eaton fire, they were cruelly labelled “disaster tourists”, even though the reality is, if they had stayed at home and not publicly joined in the efforts they would have come in for a different sort of kicking.

Then, the exigencies of the fires meant that the release of the duchess’ So-Cal dreamscape of an entertaining show, With Love, Meghan had to be pushed back until March, with all the momentum that was building around the project fizzling out. Now she and Netflix will have to start that much further back on the board when it finally does debut.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle visited victims of the Eaton Fire in LA. Picture: FOX 11 Los Angeles

Next came the great gong strike of Vanity Fair’s War and Peace-length take-down of the Sussexes, including the claim that working with Meghan was “really, really, really awful.

Very painful”, that she was “Really, like, Mean Girls teenager,” and that after working with her, podcasting staff had quit or ended up in long-term therapy.

Of the alleged bullying claims first aired by the Times back in 2021, said someone who had worked with her, “Oh any given Tuesday this happened.”

(Meghan has always strenuously denied allegations of bullying. In the wake of the Vanity Fair piece, the Sussexes’ dismissed the “distressing” allegations, the Times reported.)

Harry, for his part, comes across in the Vanity Fair piece an impeccably-mannered lost boy of sorts who drinks hot chocolate in meetings, seems perplexed how he ended up cut off from his family, “hadn’t made many friends yet,” and is now stuck having to do paying jobs

to keep the lights on, a fate no royal prince could ever be prepared for. (‘What, you mean I have to come in and do this all again tomorrow? AND the day after? Well I never…’)

In case 2025 wasn’t shaping up as bumpy enough for the Sussexes, over in Washington, came the return to power of a grubby, grubbing globule of ego, rancour and trowelled-on supermarket foundation. The presidential equivalent of the skin tag has previously said he won’t “protect” the duke from conservative efforts to have his visa application made public.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are suffering through a blistering start to the year. Picture: Emmanuel Osodi/Anadolu/Getty

Last week, The Daily Beast reported that an ally of Donald Trump “will personally urge [him] to deport Prince Harry if he lied on immigration papers”.

Add up all of the events of January and you have a seriously bruising start to the year for Team Montecito.

Then came Davos-going David.

Hopefully Harry has not been paying too much attention to the news coming out of the WEF given his keen interest in herring tariffs and the fact that King Charles was reportedly too busy to see him on several occasions when he was in the UK last year – but could find the time to meet with Beckham as he reminded forum attendees.

Said the sporting star of their ties: “He is into bees, I’m into bees. He is into the countryside, I’m into the countryside”.

There is, of course, a third, unspoken shared interest – neither of them seems to be that keen on the Sussexes any more.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as David Beckham’s tough message for Harry and Meghan