Beckham

The Beckhams: To the market, together

David Beckham appears to be heading for a complete break with his agents to create “Team Beckham”, which would market him and his wife Victoria together as a global brand.

The move, dreamed up by Simon Fuller, the creator of the Spice Girls, comes as Victoria Beckham attempts another pop music comeback.

The couple’s combined selling power was illustrated last week with the release of an advertisement for a Japanese cosmetics company in which they both appear.

Details of negotiations over David Beckham’s departure from the sports agency SFX were being kept secret. A source close to the Beckhams described as “utter nonsense” a report that the footballer had already handed the agency a £2 million cheque last Friday to buy himself out of his contract.

Despite the denials, Beckham’s lawyers were said to be in intensive talks with SFX, which earns 10-15 per cent of Beckham’s income, thought to be £20 million a year.

Two months ago, it was suggested that Victoria was winning a battle for her husband to part company with SFX, although the 28-year-old England captain would still have all his football dealings handled by Tony Stephens, the company’s marketing director, who has been his confidant since his early days with Manchester United.

Victoria Beckham, who once proclaimed that she wanted to be “more famous than Daz Automatic”, yesterday launched the cult US clothing line Rocawear at Selfridges in Oxford Street.

Dressed in a bright blue satin bomber jacket, a rapper-style medallion and a pair of ripped jeans, she posed beside giant billboards of herself. Alongside her was Damon Dash, the music and clothing entrepreneur behind Rocawear.

Dash has produced her latest album and has been put in charge of re-instating her solo music image.

A video for her single, This Groove/Let Your Head Go, for release on December 29, shows her dressed in a see-through negligee, black lingerie and fishnet hold-ups, hoovering a carpet — an image once used by Madonna to push her music.