This week, David Beckham will be the first man to appear solo on the front of a woman's fashion glossy. Here, Elle's editor discusses the latest cover star...
There’s a small queue of women waiting nervously to talk to me in the school playground after the morning drop off. My heart beats a little faster as I approach them and I’m aware of the giddiness rising around me.
‘You can watch it here,’ I whisper to the first in line, and she scribbles down the website address furtively. ‘It’s only ten seconds long but he is topless in a swimming pool,’ I say. ‘I’ll have more for you in a couple of weeks.’
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Devoted dad: David Beckham with baby Harper
If you captured this scene on camera, you’d probably assume I was passing on details of an illicit website such is the fervent female interest. But I’m not.
I’m directing women (normal, grounded, intelligent women, with good self-esteem) to watch a video clip starring David Beckham; a man whose persona has reached such heroic proportions that any contact with him provokes an extraordinary reaction. He is without doubt Viagra for a generation of sexually liberated and secretly obsessed women.
I wish I could pour scorn on this crazed female behaviour... but I can’t. Because I’m in love, too.
‘I just love him so much,’ one of the mums in the playground tells me almost apologetically as she heads off to watch the online teaser clip of the Elle cover shoot starring 37-year-old Mr Beckham. I have never known anything like it in 15 years of working with, meeting and putting celebrities on the cover of glossy magazines. Never before have I been mobbed at the school gates by infatuated women.
Even a global icon like Madonna, who was on our cover in May 2008, didn’t elicit this kind of interest. But ever since we announced we were featuring David Beckham in our July issue — the first man ever to appear on the Elle cover in its 27-year history — I’ve been bombarded, accosted and courted by women from all areas of my life.
Heartthrob: David Beckham Goes Shirtless For Elle UK
Strike a pose: David modelling pieces from his H&M underwear range
‘Is he as handsome as he looks?’ they ask me bizarrely, desperate for any snippets of the man. I wish I could pour scorn on this crazed female behaviour, I wish I could say ‘get a grip you silly women; he’s just a man’ but I can’t. Because I’m in love, too.
I broke all the rules for David. Revealing your cover star before the issue goes on sale is a magazine no-no but I couldn’t keep it in. So why did we choose David, the LA Galaxy footballer, Olympic ambassador, H&M model, husband to Victoria and father-of-four as our only male cover star?
It’s the Olympic Games this year and I wanted to celebrate with a playful nod to the nation’s sporting and patriotic fervour from a fashion magazine.
The front cover of Elle magazine
‘Do you think he will sell copies of a women’s magazine?’ my male CEO asked rather solemnly when I told him of my man-plan. ‘Do you know any women who don’t want to see David Beckham with his shirt off?’ I replied [in my head — after all he is my boss]. Out loud I simply said ‘Yes’. And if the excitement caused by a sneaky picture we posted on Twitter is anything to go by, I’m right.
So what was he like? Well, for the record, the Beckham cover was one of the smoothest shoots we’ve ever organised. He was on time, polite and engaging. He asked — and remembered — everyone’s name. He didn’t bother with a changing room; slipping in and out of jeans and T-shirts between takes, in front of a 20-strong crew.
He didn’t mind that it was freezing when we asked him to get into the cool LA pool. And, reader, he was wearing white boxer shorts. I’ll leave that image with you for a minute.
Sadly, I wasn’t able to go on the shoot and meet him, but listening to the tape of the interview was enough to make me fall in love. He talked so lovingly about his precious baby girl, Harper, that you could hear the whole office sigh collectively.
Maybe it was when he talked about dropping his boys off at school, or when he admitted, shyly, that he calls Victoria at least five times-a-day because he’s still completely infatuated.
‘He’s just so good,’ writer Alice Wignall told me after she’d interviewed him over lunch. I’d chosen Alice because she’s sensible, smart and, perhaps, a little cynical even. I thought she’d be immune to any kind of Team Beckham charm offensive, but she came back smitten too. ‘There is no dark side,’ she told me. ‘He loves football and takes it incredibly seriously, he loves his family and he works really hard. Full stop.’
But back to reality. Putting a celebrity on the cover every month is the most time-consuming and expensive thing we do on a glossy magazine. It’s also the most important business decision I make, but as with all things in business you can never be sure you’ve made the right call.
On this occasion, though, I am. In the words of singer Bonnie Tyler, we’ve been ‘holding out for a hero’. And when we found him we put him on the cover.
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