If Victoria Beckham isn't careful she may end up being as popular among soccer fans as Yoko Ono was with Beatle groupies when she hooked up with John Lennon. The latest plot line being fed to viewers of this interminable soap opera is that her husband, Manchester United star David Beckham (24), is as henpecked as your average farm yard.
Diehard reds fans fear Posh could be about to do for Manchester United what the anti-Ono brigade said the obscure conceptual artist did for the Beatles.
Beleaguered Brylcreem boy Beckham had a row with his Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson because he missed training to stay at home with Victoria (25) and nurse their sick year-old son, Brooklyn.
Ferguson's ire led to Beckham missing a match against Leeds United. Posh's relationship with the Man U boss has been seriously shaky of late, with Fergie being of the birds-have-no-place-in-footie school. With Posh in the I-don't-give-a-monkey's-about-soccer camp it was never going to be easy.
She has reportedly moaned about Beckham's salary (a mere £25,000 a week) and his having to commute to Manchester from Hertfordshire, where they are based. Now comes the news that she may be urging Beckham to jump ship for more exotic climes. Or, at the very least, Arsenal. New Man or New Wimp? That, apparently, is the question.
Bizarrely, the fact that a couple worth £35m between them should desire a lifestyle that doesn't revolve around the hallowed turf of Old Trafford has been reason for concern rather than celebration among commentators.
In recent months the newspaper scrutiny of the couple has taken a slightly more sinister turn. The tabloids, which regularly do little to dispel the notion that all women should be pencil-thin, started to pick at another scab. Victoria appeared in public wearing a red leather strapless frock, her exposed flesh giving new meaning to the phrase good bone structure - we could count every one of them, for goodness sake. Overnight, the anorexia debate, in that responsible Ally McBeal style, had begun.
Wars can start, children can die, but hold the front page if, as happened last week, Posh catches on that modelling is the new pop music and stalks down a London catwalk in sprayed-on hotpants. If her figure gives the impression that she thinks a square meal is a piece of mini shredded wheat then so much the better.
In a week when a documentary was shown about Lena Zavaroni, the child star who suffered from eating disorders all her life and died last year aged 36, this relentless obsession with the physique of a woman, who may or may not be enduring similar anguish, is alarming. But a front-page snap of 71/2-stone skeletal Spice is said to guarantee more than 20,000 more newspaper sales.
Add the golden boots and tresses of her husband to this wall-to-wall coverage and you are really in business. Beckham has had his own troubles and his behaviour - on and off the pitch - has more resonance three days after the death of Stanley Matthews, an old-school soccer player never cautioned or sent off in his entire career.
Beckham's persecution over the last two years has come courtesy of his dramatic sending-off during England's World Cup match with Argentina in 1998 and his spending time with Victoria when he should have been training. For the latter he has been fined at least once by Manchester United. Then there are his sartorial blunders. He wears sarongs and, as Victoria revealed on the Big Breakfast, his wife's thongs.
The Beckhams (aka Thick and Thin) live life through a lens, and kidnapping threats are an everyday reality. Because they are rich, photogenic and not the brightest label victims in the world, the Beckhams are members of that curious celebrity breed who are worshipped, targeted and lampooned in equally lethal doses.
For every gushing magazine article there are cruel, obscene and sometimes very funny chants about their love life or even their baby from the football terraces. For every invitation to a glittering showbiz event there is someone (fashion designer Alexander McQueen, for example) who thinks it is uncool to have them at a show.
2Phat on Network 2 has begun a regular parody of the couple in the Beckingham Palace series. A recent skit showed Ray D'Arcy dressed up as Beckham attempting to put their dirty Prada, Gucci and Versace gear into the dishwasher. "Day-vid," Posh, played by Tracy Sheridan, whines, "You know you shouldn't mix the colours with the whites."
They complain about the attention and then hawk themselves and their baby around celebrity haunts like the plastic figurines on the ostentatious wedding cake they cut (with a sword, naturally) at their marital kitschfest in a castle outside Dublin last July.
What really seems to appeal to fans and infuriate those who can't stand them is that while the Beckhams are being touted as the prince and princess of this millennium - they even have thrones in their diningroom - they are more Royle Family than royalty.
Both grew up in the greater London suburbs of Essex and Hertfordshire. His working-class family would sacrifice anything to buy their boy the latest football boots, while she had an unashamedly nouveau riche middle-class background. Dad ran a successful electrical wholesale firm and dropped Victoria off at school in a Rolls-Royce.
Victoria Caroline Adams was bullied there because she chose to take dancing lessons when the bell rang instead of smoking behind the bike sheds. Her favourite movie was Fame, and as she ran out the gates to escape the taunts of her peers she thought, "to hell with you, I'll have my day".
She was the least talented Spice Girl and her best quality was her ability to point her finger and pull a face that made her look as though she was sucking on several pieces of lemon. She is the only one of the group who hasn't released a solo record, and at this stage is more famous for being famous than she is for anything else.
David Joseph Beckham was kicking a ball around as soon as he could stand and left school without passing a single exam. At 11 he had come top out of 5,000 entrants in a soccer skills competition and by the age of 14 he had signed with his dream team, Manchester United.
When they met, Victoria was riding high on Girl Power and he had already displayed soccer genius, scoring against Wimbledon from the halfway line.
Now they collect cars, houses, jewellery and clothes to commemorate their love in a uniquely material world.
Ever since David began playing Ken to Victoria's Barbie, Alex Ferguson has reportedly had just one request of his love-struck employee. As manager of the most celebrated crosser (and part-time cross-dresser) in the British soccer world, he wants to see less of Beckham on the front page of the tabloids and more of him on the back.
Some of us just want to less of him. And her.
Unfortunately for those of us on the sidelines, it's unlikely that the couple will display a Lennonesque ambivalence to this latest media frenzy by growing their hair and going off to live in a bag (unless, of course, the hair is the latest in chi-chi extensions and the bag is designed by Louis Vuitton).
There are, however, some other similarities with John and Yoko, namely, very public declarations of lurve, twee matching outfits, giant photographs of themselves kissing on the wall of their house and the nauseating we-are-as-one mantra.
The Ballad of Posh and Becks began three years ago but fade-out still seems very far away.
