Posh and Becks have graced the ballet. All we need now is hooliganism

Frank Johnson
Miss Posh Spice and Mr David Beckham dominated a Covent Garden ballet evening which I was at this week. At their presence, even a Covent Garden audience became abuzz. Admittedly, their legendary partnership is not yet quite the equal of Fonteyn and Nureyev. For one thing, Mr Beckham and Miss Spice were not on the stage. . . .

Celebrity must be associated with accomplishment. Mr Beckham is a great footballer. Miss Hurley, so far as we know, is not a great actress. Mr Beckham’s hair and clothes would not have been enough to arouse the interest of that ballet audience. Ballet audiences are used to people who look like him, and not just on the stage. It is that hair, and those clothes, on a great footballer — rather than on a great balletomane — which aroused the interest.

Though having no appreciation of her genre, I am told by those who do that Miss Spice is not as great a singer as her husband is a footballer. Her continued celebrity is thus derived from her being married to him. But that is all right. . . .