Posh and Becks. Working class heroes with a net worth of £455m, and, to me, right up there with the Tolpuddle Martyrs and Nye Bevan.

: a love of family; chimney-sweep levels of formative graft; and the humility of knowing the difference between sharing success and shoving the public’s faces in it. Add the questionable tatts, marriage dramas and Instagram posts from the pie and mash shop, and they’re “boy done good” perfection.

It is a tale as old as time. Watching them use those classic escape routes of music and sport to claw their way out of the prole pile, I have revelled in their 30-year masterclass in dynasty building genius and – unlike bourgeois pearl-clutchers – think “go on my son” every time there’s talk of Lord and Lady Beckham. 

Let’s be frank about it – a lot of educated middle- and upper-class people recoil from the Beckhams, and are mystified by the affection in which they’re held. Do you think they care? Victoria’s own mother clocked her Vera Wang wedding gown and commented, “Johnny Rotten in a dress”. Being plonked firmly in your place is part of being working class, the ultimate training for styling out schadenfreude snobs and making your own way. Maybe the haters don’t see themselves in the Becks’ success, but the working class do, and that’s what makes it sting so much: “wannabe” on one side, and a snidey “who do you think you are” on the other.

They say luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation, and whether it was David, aged 11, bursting into tears of relief when a Man United scout showed interest, or Victoria answering an ad in The Stage that asked “RU STREETWISE, OUTGOING, AMBITIOUS AND DEDICATED?”, both were primed for everything fame and fortune could fling their way. They may have been in the right place at the right time, but they could back it up because of the graft they’d already put in to chase the dream. 

David Beckham wasn’t the best player, but he trained his golden balls off until he was, nabbing 50p from his old man every time he scored. Victoria certainly did not have the voice of an angel, but she capitalised on that “point and pout” for all she was worth. Talent, or lack of? That’s not the point. What’s God-given is their gifts for work, self-promotion, and keeping the wheels of industry turning through the scandals, slaggings off, and inadvisable sarong wearing. They’ve done it for every girl giving it eyes and teeth at tap/ballet/modern and every boy kicking a ball against the wall of an outside lavvy.

Brought up in working-class-made-good Spam Valley, Glasgow, I was among people with the same star potential. Some made it – pop moguls, industrialists, soap stars, bestselling novelists – and none had a leg up or a family name to trade on. Was there something in the water? No, just nothing else to do and no money to do it with. So, they’d start a band, do the hustle, take over the kitchen table with some madcap project. The Beckhams would have fitted right in, with ideas above their station from the start.

Not necessarily above their class, though. That’s a bit different, and more complicated. When, in the 2023 Netflix documentary Beckham, Victoria claimed to be working class despite her dad dropping her to school in his Rolls-Royce, we questioned ourselves. 

In the week the documentary first aired, UK Google searches on the debate about class were in the millions. Since 2020, the only week they have been higher was one in July 2022 when the Tories forced Boris Johnson’s resignation and the country was beset by strikes. For Victoria, there was a “be honest” ribbing (not least from David) but then, to be fair, Tony and Jackie, her mum and dad, were originally from the working class. Materially she might have been light years away, but culturally it’s more complicated. 

As a bullied kid who begged Tony to use his white van instead, Victoria just wanted to fit in. How should you act when your family background says one thing and your bank account another? You vow that you’ll stay true. That famous black bandeau dress we all presumed was Gucci was in fact bought at H&M, and she wore it ragged; the Posh in the Spice Girls mix (their names were allotted by a journalist and picked up by the media, not self-chosen) was a parodic pee-taker who arrived at at rehearsals in a clapped-out Fiat Punto. 

This is where politicians who think social mobility equals individual working-class people transforming into middle-class ones get it all wrong. Yes, Victoria and David want the material rewards and grounded kids. What they do not want is to be Margot and Jerry from The Good Life. 

Strangely, it might not be quite so straightforward for the Beckham offspring. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t, it’s been a struggle to keep credibility. Brooklyn’s been ripped apart for his efforts in photography, content creation and, er, condiments. Romeo retired from professional football at 22, having hit the giddy heights of the Brentford FC reserves, to sign with a Parisian modelling agency. Cruz has been at band practice for what seems like eons without release, not down the local scout hut, but rather in LA with a team who’ve worked with Beyoncé and One Direction. Thirteen-year-old Harper – fashion mad and a diffusion line in waiting – will hopefully do the clever thing and train to be a tax accountant. When you are peak-level nepo baby, your brain is about the only thing no one can say you were handed on a plate.

My own kids, who guess “dunno, dirty hands?” when I ask what makes someone working class, have been brought up in a jumble of class confusion. With a builder dad whose family had jewels and ocelots till Indian independence ruined the Raj party, their forebears escaped to a council flat in Highbury and become postmen and brickies. But, like my own parents in the shipyard and social work, these were jobs for life with a magically replenished pay packet every week. 

This generation of Joneses lives in the precariat, self-employed world of feast, famine and freebies. There have been times when they’ve helped me review five-star hotels, but they’ve also had their birthday money raided for the gas bill. They seem contentedly skint, on zero-hours contracts and minimum wage, with no hope of escaping the family home in their twenties, living on Poundland ramen and Klarna buys, determined not to ask me for a payday loan since AI came for us journalists.

Back in 1995, the world may have been as grey as John Major’s socks, but the blossoming Beckhams had it easier. Charles and Di’s fairytale may have fucked up, just a bite of beefburger could rot your brain, and the police had new powers to piss on ravers’ chips. But it was also when David made his debut at Old Trafford and when the Spice Girls signed to Virgin, segueing nicely into the whole mood of “things can only get better” when they hooked up two years later.

I fell in love with them even more after their subsequent wedding. Why not survey the room from gilded thrones and dress your infant in posset-daubed Cavalli? This was going to be the one time when shaking your moneymaker was acceptable. The Chingford nans birdy dancing in their fascinators and the blingtastic Cartier diamonds for best man and bridesmaids were the splicing of two worlds: a huge piss-take of themselves that the haters took at face value.

They have so much in common with the common, it’s a joy. Even David’s masterful handling of his affair with Rebecca Loos was very much a keep-your-neb-out blank, the public sympathy for Posh the equivalent of your maw commenting, “Her man might be a shagger, but those net curtains are immaculate.”

So good on them. They love their kids, slog like dogs, make the most of what talent they have, and seem like good people in a world of celebrity shits. They’re working. And they’re class.

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