OPINION No honour in desperate crawling for knighthood

Like many quotes about football, it’s most commonly attributed to Bill Shankly.

Turning to a young player who wasn’t flourishing on the pitch as he had academically, Shanks said: “Your trouble son, is that your brains are all in your heid.”

No such accusation has ever been made of David Beckham. And it’s now even less likely that Beckham will be asked to add Mensa to his portfolio of endorsements.

While the emptying of the beanie-hatted ex-England captain’s email cache might seem like a piece of diversionary froth it provides an insight into image control, contempt for the public and political manipulation.

Beckham had apparently become a man so desperate for a knighthood that he was prepared to take part in a staged TV interview with Jonathan Ross to advance his cause.

Ross, never slow to pass up an opportunity for some A-list sycophancy, was only too happy to oblige, according the leak. What a warped state of affairs.

A working class Essex lad, who made it to the top, crawling for an arbitrary honour decided by a bunch of faceless Whitehall lickspittles.

So frustrated had the once-Alice-banded dead ball ace become that he whined to a PR flunkey: “It’s a disgrace to be honest and if I was American I would of (sic) got something like this 10 years ago.”

Erm, couple of problems with that, David. If it’s an establishment awarded honour on behalf of a hereditary monarch that you’re after, the UK remains very much the place for a desperate celeb to be.

By now, the slow- wit ted Unicef ambassador had become so detached from reality that he was dissuaded from posting a picture of himself with a gold plated laptop in the following terms: “Nice, will keep that one of (sic) social media as then the idiots will say you’re being showy like Lewis Hamilton private planes etc.

Be in no doubt that when Simon Oliveira, the apparent brains behind Brand Beckham, says idiots, he means you and me.

Where this saga takes a more sinister turn is when Becks has the promise of establishment approval he craves dangled in return for political favours.

So it was that he added his name to a list of the great and the good backing the Better Together campaign.

Not through any political conviction. Just because he wanted to be Sir Dave.

It suggests murky, political chicanery.

When Simon Oliveira, the brains behind Becks, says idiots, he means you and me

And provides proof positive that, in most cases, celebrities talking about politics are best ignored.