Brand Beckham is a house built on our wish for good role models

THE Beckhams' fortune, as revealed in The Sunday Times' Rich List, was in the region of £455 million on the back of advertising deals with the likes of Armani and Adidas.

- Melanie McDonagh

Victoria's fashion brand has made a profit for the first time in years and it now includes cosmetics and scent. David's Inter Miami football team has signed up - Lionel Messi, arguably the most famous footballer on earth. The documentary on Beckham was an unexpected, oddly funny, hit. The couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary this year.

All this would come as a surprise if you had come to the end of Tom Bower's The House of Beckham. From the start it reads like a parable of pride coming before a fall, of Vanity Fair, or how a couple from Essex tried to make themselves into a global brand, and failed ignominiously. We learn so much in such detail about their fundamental emptiness, that it feels odd to know that in fact, this uninteresting pair have achieved and, more improbably, sustained a unique marital brand.