Sex, power and bust-ups: inside brand Beckham

Tom Bower has skewered everyone from Boris to the royals - now he's turned his lens on Posh and Becks. So how juicy is it really?

- Katie Strick

VICTORIA BECKHAM punched her husband David in the face after the first reports of him cheating. She's so tight with money she once expensed some Marks & Spencer crisps during a shoot. And the couple hit such a low-point that they barely spoke.

These are just some of the juiciest allegations made by celebrity biographer Tom Bower in his bombshell new book about the Beckhams, The House of Beckham, branded "a symphony of snide" and "a ghastly portrait" of a couple locked in a devil's bargain depending on which of the early reviewers you ask.

The unflattering biography lands on bookshelves tomorrow and promises to be a study of the Beckhams' marriage, featuring everything from allegations of infidelity to entertaining anecdotes about Glastonbury and family photo shoots. Bower, a former BBC Panorama reporter who has written biographies on everyone from Mohamed Al-Fayed to Simon Cowell, doesn't hold back on painting the couple as vain, power-hungry pair ("they personify the superficiality of contemporary celebrity," he writes) and commentators say it risks denting the British power brand that is Posh and Becks. Wreckage, shame and downfall are among the chapter titles. These are the most explosive allegations.

Posh punched Becks in the face after reports of cheating

There have been various rumours of infidelity during the couple's 27-year relationship, but Bower claims the first slew of rumours - that he called her to admit he'd been accused of kissing another woman while she was pregnant with their first son, Brooklyn, in 1998 - got her so worked up she punched him in the face.

"I hadn't planned it," she reportedly confessed. "I hadn't punched anybody before. Just instinct. I just felt angry and hurt." The couple fled to Lake Como to mend their relationship, and tied the knot four months after Brooklyn's birth.

Five women reported to have had affairs with Becks