# Posted 8:18 PM by Patrick Belton  

WHAT THE BECK: I am about to do something which is illegal on British soil. Not to call for the abolition of the monarchy - actually, we here at OxBlog have generally had quite good things to say about the usefulness of the Queen in the nation's diplomacy and in Britain's efforts to maintain a higher world profile. (Anyway, who in South Africa ever gets excited about a visit from the imponderous President of, say, Ireland?) No, this is to do something far more dangerous - to question, loudly, what the heck all of the fixation with David Beckham was all about in the first place.

I mean, come on - he looks like a ren-faire geek, just if possible even less manly. How he ever convinces random Euro-femmes to commit adultery with him proves, I think, just how easily sex is to come by in post-Christian Europe. He got his wife's name tattooed on his arm in Hindi - but it's spelt incorrectly. He has allowed himself to be seen in public in a sarong, never a wise fashion choice for any English male. And as far as his hair - shaved off, cut into a Mohawk, long and wild and carefully done into plaits, he's always looked basically like a geek. Yes, yes, he slipped one past Greece in 2002 to draw and keep England in the World Cup, but he got stood up by Lisa Simpson, when the show's producers decided he wasn't well known enough in the States to receive a cameo role. And he named his kid Brooklyn? What, so he can develop a fondness for America and be playmates with Prince Michael II?

His and Posh Spice's three-week publicity tour of the States in June was, well, basically ignored. But perhaps there's another side to this, that we're missing. Which is that Beckham shows all of us that you can be an effeminate, geeky looking, and style-challenged English male, and still have a chance of pulling when you go to the Continent. Which perhaps is worth letting the bloke hang around, after all.

UPDATE: After early mistaken attempts involving Arab democracy and gay rights, OxBlog finally hits on the secret for filling up our inbox. Randy Paul from Beautiful Horizons writes in amusingly, "I'm an Arsenal and FC Barcelona fan, so my antipathy towards Beckham is well grounded, but in fairness to him he did name his oldest kid Brooklyn because he was conceived there. Thank God he wasn't conceived say in a hotel near LaGuardia in Flushing for example." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion