As David Beckham turns 50 next week, will he get his dream birthday gifts – a united family and a knighthood?
It was little over a year ago that David Beckham proudly posed for a photographer from this newspaper with his three sons, Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz, at his wife’s 50th birthday party, all four men looking relaxed and happy.
Yet just minutes before, emotions had been rather higher among the Beckhams. For as David and his family had entered smart Mayfair restaurant Oswald’s, with Victoria still on crutches after breaking her foot, waiting freelance paparazzi had caused a chaotic scene.
So much so that the normally publicity-friendly clan refused to stop outside for their pictures to be taken. Romeo, I’m told, was particularly angry.
Not David, though. With notable grace, he beamed happily for our cameras stationed officially inside the venue, giving Mail readers an exclusive peek.
Fast forward 12 months and David’s diplomacy skills will be required again but this time on two fronts – domestic and professional.
Because on Friday it is his own 50th birthday. And there are two things he would desperately love to happen.
First the personal: he desires nothing more than for his first-born Brooklyn and his wife Nicola to join the rest of the family on an idyllic jaunt to celebrate his birthday in a secret European location. More on the delicate negotiations required for this later.
As for the professional, there is one accolade that still eludes one of England’s best-known figures. And that is, of course, his knighthood.
