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AS a global superstar in her own right, Victoria Beckham was the very zenith of Wag culture.
With her deep fake tan, caramel hair extensions and pneumatic chest, unquestionably VB was Queen Bee at the infamous 2006 World Cup in Germany.
But it was there in Baden-Baden that the retired Spice Girl “buried those boobs” as she memorably says in her new Netflix doc.
Today, the designer opens up on her decision to ditch the implants, revealing upmarket designer Roland Mouret — who features in the show — was behind her move to get them removed.
Laughing at how they’re now quite possibly “bobbing around in the Mediterranean sea”, Victoria says: “I mean, yes, I was a Wag. And a proud one.
“I think that I’ve spent such a long time after the Spice Girls searching for my purpose and I didn’t know what it was, so I suppose that’s why I dressed in that way. There were a lot of hair extensions, tight tops and fake tan, although, I still do fake tan.
“I’m not going to lie, it was probably to get attention, because I was searching for my identity.
“I don’t know where those boobs went, but they went. It was definitely working with Roland that did it. He’s so great and I wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for him.
“It came from a need to be taken more seriously and me not knowing who I was. And so I think it was Roland that encouraged me to just be me — not feel I had to be that person. To just tone it down.
“And I think the nice thing about it is, then, I could just show myself through my collections.”
Speaking to Victoria on the ground floor of her flagship Mayfair store, it is clear her previous insecurities — and fear of saying the wrong thing — have gone.
She is happy in her own skin (as well she should be because, up close, it is flawless, thanks to a rigid skincare routine, and lots of broccoli).
We chat hours before the Netflix premiere of her three-part series, which today shot to the top of the UK streamer’s charts.
She adds: “I look back at those days now and I smile.
“I was probably getting it from all angles back then, but let me tell you, I’ve had a lot worse said about me than I was a Wag.
“I mean, we were all wives and girlfriends. Let me tell you, though, that’s probably one of the nicest things people have said about me.
“For years, people have misunderstood my irony.
“Of course ‘Wag’ is probably seen as un-feminist nowadays, but we live in different times, and people now are much more accountable for what they say.”
Ahead of our interview, having already watched the series, I present Victoria with a small gift — a personalised VB “sippy cup”, and a £4.50 bottle of wine.
It is a nod to a hilarious clip in the first episode, where she and ex-England captain husband David are seen clutching sippy cups filled to the brim with (expensive) wine.
Of course ‘Wag’ is probably seen as un-feminist nowadays, but we live in different times, and people now are much more accountable for what they say.
Victoria Beckham
At the end of our chat, I am delighted to see her proudly clutching said sippy cup (and wine), as she strides out of the store, and on to her next engagement.
Happily married for 26 years, today Victoria and David are worth a combined £500million.
Both have supremely successful solo careers, as well as being Britain’s most famous family brand. With homes across the world — and a yacht — the couple want for nothing.
Victoria chooses to lead by example, instilling a work ethic into each of her four children.
While eldest son Brooklyn, 26, is forging a career with his own hot sauce company Stateside, former footballer Romeo is successfully modelling, and Harper is being made to do her homework in addition to her online make-up tutorials alongside her mum.
Cruz is an aspiring singer and songwriter.
He has already received critical acclaim, and has been signed up to a top music management company — all off his own bat.
“Cruz has got music coming out soon,” Victoria adds.
“He’s spent the last ten years learning his craft — much like I did with Roland — learning to play instruments.
“He taught himself to play about seven instruments.
“He writes his own songs, he’s put a band together.
“He’s properly done it from the grass roots up.
“He hasn’t just come in and sung his songs, or demanded anything.
“I mean I can’t really give him any advice — the industry has changed so much.
“But I told him, ‘Don’t expect immediate success’.
“It’s almost better if it isn’t an immediate success.
“You know, it’s like with my fashion thing — it’s taken me 20 years to get it to where it is.
“You’ve got to start small and build it up. And that’s exactly what he’s doing, playing tiny venues, no fuss, doing his thing.
“I am so proud of him.”
When I suggest he’s not a traditional nepo-baby — the disparaging term given to offspring of the rich and famous — she chips in: “But he is a nepo.
“I mean, I feel sorry for these kids that are considered nepo-babies.
“The kids are simply the kids of their parents.
“It’s not their fault.
“Give them a chance.
“What matters is that people are good and kind.
“It is fine to be ambitious, but it is more important to be kind.
“Let the music speak for itself before you judge.”
So what of her 14-year-old daughter, Harper, who has been popping up on Victoria’s Instagram feed more and more?
What matters is that people are good and kind. It is fine to be ambitious, but it is more important to be kind.
Victoria Beckham
The teen has two scene-stealing moments in her mother’s eponymous doc — one in which she’s teaching her a TikTok dance, and another making her speech-making debut at a swanky awards do. She shines in both.
Most recently, the youngster has been doing make-up tutorials. Will she be the next Kylie Jenner? Watch this space.
Says Victoria proudly: “Harper is going to be one of two things.
“She’s either going to be a beauty mogul or she’s going to be a stand-up.
“She is hilarious.”
Back to Victoria — or Lady Beckham as she’ll soon be, once Goldenballs collects his imminent knighthood.
The spiritual star, who carries crystals everywhere she goes, hopes to further expand her blossoming beauty business, which last year reported a revenue of almost £113million, as well as opening new clothing stores abroad.
While she still believes her proudest achievement to date is her four happy children — “mother, first, is how I define myself” — she adds: “I’m proud of the businesses.
“I think I’m a good leader.
“I’m proud of my teams.
“Someone came in to work with us the other day that comes from another fashion house, and they said that it’s so rare to have that thriving team.
“It made me happy.
“I’m all about energy — positive energy.
“By the way, last night I did a lot of manifesting because it was a supermoon.
“I wrote things down, things I want to achieve.
“There is still so much more I want to do.
“I have so many ideas and I am just so excited for the future.”
FORMER Spice Girl Victoria Beckham revealed her youngest son had to go hungry at McDonald’s recently as he didn’t have enough money.
The staunchly down-to-earth fashion designer and her former England footie star husband David refuse to spoil their four privileged kids — leaving Cruz, 20, unable to pay for his Big Mac.
Smiling, Victoria explained: “Cruz got turned away from McDonald’s recently.
“He got turned away from McDonald’s because he didn’t have enough money on his card.”
It is news which will further endear the star to fans — especially in the age of the nepobaby.
She laughs when I tell her it reminds me of TV chef Gordon Ramsay, who said he refused to pay for his kids to fly first class, insisting: “I do not want them sat there with a 10 course f**king menu with champagne.
“I am not embarrassed.
“It is my wife and I’s choice to discipline them and to keep them real.”
While Posh does not go this far — although Romeo, 23, was recently photographed on a budget airline — it is clear keeping her children’s feet firmly on the ground is important to her.
A TOURIST hotspot town embroiled in raging war against second home owners has been forced to row back further on harsh council tax hikes.
Bungling Pembrokeshire officials have made the “massively embarrassing” decision to slash its second home council tax premium – for the second time in a year.
Home to holiday hotspots Tenby and Solva, local authorities admitted the tax had sparked “real financial hardship” and hit tourism hard.
Councillors have now narrowly voted to cut the penalty to 125 per cent – which is expected to save buyers £500 on an average bill.
The cut marked the second in 12 months – with the rate already slashed down from 200 per cent last year.
It comes after hundreds of second home owners flooded the markets to swerve the tax.
In recent months, property markets have been swamped with homes as a result of the punitive measures.
In Tenby, over a quarter of all properties were classified as holiday homes, with 154 of them listed for sale on Rightmove in April.
But properties have so far failed to come under the ownership of locals as the council intended – as the homes are still to pricey.
Councillor Phillip Kidney said: “This has put local people in big distress financially – that’s not what this was brought in to do.
“They’re not multi-millionaire homeowners or property developers.”
Tenby is known for its historic architecture and sandy beaches, but now, its facing a housing market in freefall.
In April, asking prices across Pembrokeshire had dropped by 8.9 per cent, according to the Principality Building Society.
Calum Phillips, senior sales negotiator with a leading estate agency in Tenby, said the home tax has had a crippling effect.
He said: “The second-home tax and the effect it’s had on the town is a conversation I have every day with buyers and sellers.
“The majority of second-home owners are looking to either sell their properties or list not to get 12-months exemption.
“Buyers know that there aren’t many second-home owners in the market any more because of the tax and that’s forcing down prices.”
When Pembrokeshire council debated the second home council tax premium last year, members were split over the level to set it at.
Council officials argued that every 50 percentage points cut in the premium was equivalent to a £2.6million cut in revenue for the cash-strapped local authority.
The council settled on a halfway reduction to 150 per cent against the wishes of the ruling group.
The 200 per cent tax raid last year was initially popular with locals who feared being priced out of their hometown.
But it caused a “disaster” – with a loophole making the situation even worse.
Second-home owners swerved the premium by putting their homes up for sale.
Many of the homes on offer are luxury sea-view pads far beyond the budget of first-time buyers.
Estate agent Carol Peett told the Sunday Times: “The sitation is a nightmare – total disaster.
“It’s killing the economy totally. There are loads of empty houses on the market that were holiday cottages.”
IT was the world’s coolest firm – where sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll were more likely than data, suits and blue-sky thinking.
EMI was the home of legends: The Beatles, Stones, Tina Turner, Queen and Spice Girls among a glittering roster of acts.
It was also home to a penthouse “shag pad”, a “sex lift” and an alleged £200,000-a-year fund reserved for “drugs and hookers”.
And the extravagance didn’t end there — one exec splashed out £20,000 on candles for an artist’s green room.
Tales of extreme indulgence emerge on new six-part podcast Money, Music & Mayhem.
Host Chris Atkins says: “Pick out your favourite bands and most of them were EMI.
“They had the golden touch and the magic ears.
“They gave us the best music that defined our culture for generations.
“Britain punched above its weight for decades because of EMI and it meant our music was an over-represented force in America and the world.”
And with that status came a workplace culture of excess.
Hundreds of workers would flock to Glastonbury every year on the company dime.
The only company with more attendees was the BBC, which broadcasts the event.
EMI also had the second-largest corporate private taxi account, used to ferry staff to gigs and after-parties and then home again in the small hours.
Chris says: “That corporate extravagance, which is alien now, was celebrated and the calling card of an industry that showed off how much money it could p**s up a wall.”
Then there’s the sordid story of a cleaning cupboard at Virgin Records where a lift used to be, before EMI bought the label for £510million in 1992.
Ernesto Schmitt, who worked at EMI, says it used to be a “sex lift”, adding: “I’m not making this up, it was real.
“This relic was a running joke at EMI for years.
“The elevator was straight out of a knocking shop.
“It was padded with studs and had secret compartments with sex toys, vodka bottles and stuff.
“And then you would go to the penthouse and it was laid out like a shag pad, I kid you not.”
This type of excess created monster egos.
But even EMI eyebrows were raised at one demand by Can’t Touch This hitmaker MC Hammer.
In 1990, his album Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ’Em had topped the US charts, selling 10million copies, and he had sold out Wembley Stadium.
Record plugger Phil Barton recalls the rapper summoning everyone into a dark room to pay tribute to him while he sat on a throne with a cane and black-lensed glasses.
Phil says: “We individually went up to him and said, ‘Thanks’, and then walked off and he would nod in a kind of regal way.
“We were giggling at the back and we got shot dirty looks, like ‘Don’t f***k this up!’.”
But the world’s coolest record company’s demise came after it had been taken over — by “the least cool man in the world”.
Private equity investor Guy Hands bought EMI with his company Terra Firma Capital Partners in 2007, a year before the financial crash.
It was a huge tragedy when EMI fell apart and was bought by multinational companies
Chris Atkins
The company was already losing out on millions of sales due to illegal music sharing on notorious website Napster.
And it only had a new band success rate of ten per cent.
With stats like that, Guy — who paid £4.2billion for EMI, borrowing from US firm Citigroup — decided to take a data-led, risk-averse approach.
This contrasted to the previous way, which could be categorised as “throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks”.
But it eventually saw him lose 60 per cent of his personal net worth and EMI being taken over by Citigroup in 2011, when the debts could not be repaid.
The company was then broken up and sold off.
“It was a huge tragedy when EMI fell apart and was bought by multinational companies,” says Chris Atkins.
“Not enough was made of that.
“Their successes weren’t celebrated enough nor was the decline mourned enough. I’m sad it’s gone.”
When Guy came on board in 2007, Chris says his “army of whizz kids” were focused on data rather than the “massively risky gamble” of “throwing mud at a wall”.
EMI’s old approach may have had some “terrible returns” but it did find once-in-a-generation talent.
That pool also included Coldplay, Kate Bush, Mariah Carey, David Bowie and numerous others.
And, of course, there were those four working-class lads from Liverpool, who had been told by every other label that “guitar music was dead” and “no one would buy it any more”.
The Beatles became EMI’s ultimate cash cow, producing culture-defining music and dominated the globe.
Mind you, even the old EMI could be risk averse.
In 1977 they quickly dropped foul-mouthed punks The Sex Pistols because of public outrage.
But they were on safer territory when they snapped up Oxford-band On A Friday in 1991.
Chris explains: “EMI got to the front of the pack, signed them for a six- album deal, but said, ‘Your name is crap, how about you call yourselves Radiohead?’.”
A lot of it was a car crash,” Chris says. “All of this bonkers stuff was seen by rock stars as selling out
Chris Atkins
Later, under Guy, EMI tried easy cashgrab ideas, such as a Coldplay toothbrush that played their hit Yellow, a scheme to charge people to watch sessions at Abbey Road Studios and for Radiohead to front a marketing campaign with “bland, boring, middle-class” brand Next.
None was accepted by the artists.
“A lot of it was a car crash,” Chris says. “All of this bonkers stuff was seen by rock stars as selling out.”
Mick Jagger was pitched a Rolling Stones-themed board game, a spin-off for video game Guitar Hero and an outrageous reality TV show.
Chris says: “They had the idea for Stones Idol, like Pop Idol, to find a new member for the band, with Mick and Keith Richards as Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh.
“The aspiring pop stars in wigs would stay in trashed rooms, with tellies thrown out of the windows, and the Stones would reject or tutor them.
“I’m gutted it never made it to air.
“I was told Mick was so insulted, he went to the loos and never came back.
“Weeks later they left EMI.”
There were money-saving contract disputes, too.
Joss Stone’s advance was slashed after EMI believed they “wouldn’t sell very many of her future records”.
Furiously, she marched into Guy’s office with her poodle, Dusty Springfield, for a showdown — only for the dog to “deliver what prisoners call a ‘dirty protest’.”
Similarly, when EMI refused to write off a “small debt” owed by indie band The Verve, their manager allegedly threw a CD at Guy’s head, “trashed his office” and “threw paper everywhere”.
But sometimes Guy’s approach worked.
EMI’s Beatles back catalogue reissue in 2009 sold 20million in a few months.
The label’s market research had discovered Fab Four fans did not know where to buy their music any more and that most of them watched the QVC shopping channel, so Chris says “data wonks” said to sell it on there.
He adds this was “utter sacrilege to the traditional folk at EMI” and insulting to the firm’s “crown jewels”.
Some artists sneered at the use of data but Snoop Dogg “loved the spreadsheets”, as did David Guetta.
Both became “hugely successful as a result”.
Sadly, those wins were not enough and Guy eventually oversaw the company’s demise.
Musicians such as Lily Allen fumed.
She even changed lyrics to her 2008 song F**** You to “F**** you, EMI” at one concert.
“When you have musicians like Robbie Williams on one side and bankers on the other, you’re always going to go, ‘Poor Robbie’,” Chris says.
Guy was staring into the abyss.
He had a mental breakdown from the stress and developed a “bizarre eating disorder” where he became addicted to roast potatoes.
Citigroup took ownership of EMI in 2011 due to the unpaid debts, and later cut it up and sold it off to different companies.
Chris does not entirely blame Guy and says the investor “admits all of his mistakes” and lost billions.
He even suspects he was ahead of his time.
“When Guy took over, the pantry was empty, they were screwed financially,” he says.
“The least cool man in the world had to save the world’s coolest company and s**t hit the fan.
“It was a clash between money and art, which are really, really odd bedfellows.
“Penny-pinching, cost-cutting and playing it safe are the antithesis of rock and roll.
“Guy wasn’t a lunatic banker who ruined the music business for everyone.
“But the situation became nitroglycerin and went up in a big explosion.”
THE parents of murdered toddler James Bulger have won the right to speak at the parole hearing of his killer Jon Venables.
Denise Fergus, 57, and her ex-husband, Ralph Bulger, 59, can read out victim impact statements at the hearing — due by the end of the year.
It means they would be able to explain to the panel that they fear Venables being freed because he still poses a danger.
It is the first time they have been allowed to attend a hearing about his future.
A source said: “Both Denise and Ralph strongly believe Venables cannot be rehabilitated and is a massive danger.
“Being able to say that in person will be much more powerful than an official doing it on their behalf.
“It could make a difference as to whether he walks free or not.”
Venables, now 43, was ten when he and Robert Thompson abducted and murdered two-year-old James in Liverpool in 1993.
He was freed in 2001 with a new identity but has been recalled to jail twice over child abuse images.
He was refused parole in 2023.
