THE PATH TO POSH
Ahead of her 50th birthday on Wednesday, Victoria Beckham’s biographer looks back on the shy but determined girl who set out to conquer the pop world... and succeeded
VICTORIA Adams might not have been the outstanding dancer or singer at her prestigious stage school, but she was the star pupil in what would prove to be the most important subject for her sensational future – image. Just to be accepted as a student at the Laine Theatre Arts in Epsom was a feather in the cap of the unassuming girl from the commuter village of Goffs Oak in Hertfordshire. She had always harboured the ambition to go to a Fame School and had been an avid watcher of the popular New York-based TV series, Fame, in the 1980s. That dream became a reality when she was accepted by the school founded by the indomitable Betty Laine, who recognised Victoria’s strongest talent.
“She was always very conscious of image which is, of course, paramount to success,” she recalled. “She trained in dance, singing and acting but, in the business, image is very important. She took this extremely seriously.”
Victoria was just 17 when she had her first professional photographs taken for a portfolio that could be sent to casting agents. Uniquely, in the experience of the photographer, Geoff Marchant, she turned up to his studio in Horley, Surrey, knowing exactly what she wanted – or, more precisely, what she did not want. She was not going to smile.
He recalled: “She didn’t want to make herself girly and she didn’t want to make herself pretty-pretty.”
She brought with her a large bag of clothes almost entirely black, with just a few white things for contrast. And she scraped her hair back in the South American style she has favoured many times over the years.
“She was quite an image-seeker even then,” said Geoff, who was proud of the fact that he managed to persuade her to smile for a couple of shots.
The look that would become known as the ‘Posh Pout’ was devised by the lady herself, long before the Spice Girls came into being. Arguably, it’s outlasted the band that brought her fame as she turns 50 on Wednesday, still married to ex-footballer David and with four children and a (finally) flourishing fashion business.
LAINE Theatre Arts was a hard graft for all its students – eight hours a day of mainly dance, followed by further practice or rehearsals for college productions. Yet unlike many of her peers, Victoria was fortunate to have rich parents. Tony and Jackie Adams had bought her a flat in Epsom and a Fiat Uno for her 17th birthday.
Indeed, her parents were a striking example of how hard work and a strong partnership – starting the family electrical business in the garage – could lead to success and an affluent lifestyle. Victoria would follow that lead when she met David Beckham and they became arguably the most famous couple in the UK. Tony had started life in a traditionally working-class area of North London. There was nothing at all posh about post-war Edmonton, where money was rationed just as much as food.
His modest family home had no heating, no bathroom and an outside toilet.
By the time Victoria, their eldest of three children, started senior school, Tony was the proud owner of a Rolls-Royce with a personalised number plate and the family home, The Old School House, boasted a swimming pool and a gardener.
The money was certainly there for Victoria to enjoy a traditionally posh upbringing of private school and ponies, but she didn’t want either of those. She wanted to perform. Her dad had been the first to ignite that interest, dancing his daughter round the room while Stevie Wonder’s Sir Duke blasted out from the record player.
Tony had very nearly been a pop star himself in the 1960s, signing a contract with Joe Meek just before the notorious manager murdered his landlady and then turned the shotgun on himself. After those shocking events, Tony’s pop career never escaped from the subsequent legal red tape.
Victoria was determined to take over the pop reins or, at the very least, have a career on the stage, pestering her mother to send her to a Fame Academy, before settling for something closer to home. At age eight, she began dancing at the Jason Theatre School in nearby Broxbourne. Her many years there, dancing after her lessons and in the holidays, were among the happiest of her youth.
During her blissful years at the Jason School, Victoria won countless trophies through her determination and the long hours of practice. When she was 15, she won the school’s premier shield for “dedication and hard work”.
Life at the Jason School contrasted sharply with the daily grind of St Mary’s High School. Her parents easily could have afforded to send her to prestigious Roedean but instead she went to the Cheshunt equivalent of Grange Hill, a predominantly working-class school where Victoria preferred to be picked up by her mum in her Renault to Dad waiting at the gates in the Roller.
It wasn’t all a grind, however. She went on her first date with an American boy called Franco, whose father was minister at St Mary’s. They went to see a movie in Waltham Cross. The rather comical thing about the date was it was the first time that Victoria, aged 15, had ever been on a bus. She was also unimpressed by his dress sense – baggy jeans, white socks and a tucked in T-shirt.
They had only one date. By the time it came to leave school, she was involved with her first serious boyfriend, Mark Wood, an older boy of 19, who she had met when he came to help fit a burglar alarm at The Old School House. She was calling herself Victoria Adams-Wood when it came to taking her next step on the path to Posh.
Her audition for the Laine Theatre Arts, considered by many to be the crème de la crème of finishing schools for budding stage stars, was such a success that she secured a scholarship. Once again, that successful application demolished the opinion that she has no talent or that she was in some way lucky to achieve any success.
UNSURPRISINGLY, perhaps, as a world-famous superstar in 2001, she went back to the Jason Theatre School where it all began to present the prizes at its 50th anniversary. She told pupils: “I want to come to the school to give back something they’ve given to me.”
She had not been so happy at Laine’s, with the constant scrutiny of her weight, but by the time it came to audition for a proper show, she had the look (moody), the costume (all black, which had the added bonus of making her appear slimmer) and the perfect song to match (Mein Herr from the famous musical, Cabaret).
Overcoming intense competition, Victoria
secured a part at the first attempt in a new musical called Bertie based on the life of the music hall legend Vesta Tilley.
Despite a stellar cast that included Ron Moody and Julia Mckenzie, it failed to transfer from Birmingham to the West End. So it was back to square one, but she persevered with the image that suited her so well.
Mein Herr allowed her to sail past the first audition for a new girl band being put together by young manager Chris Herbert. While she was clearly one of the best dancers – perhaps matched only by a young Melanie Brown (Mel B) – Chris was also impressed by her singing voice in those early days. When the chosen hopefuls started on the long road to becoming the Spice Girls, Victoria shared a room with Geri, who complained she was taking up all the space with her designer clothes.
Eventually, after a successful London showcase for record executives, the soon-tobe famous five were offered a contract by the management company. It was Victoria who warned against them signing recklessly, persuading the others to wait until she had shown the contract to her dad. Tony read it and declared succinctly: “It’s like throwing hundred pound notes on the fire. Forget it.”
And so Spice, as they were called at first, shaped their own destiny, except for one crucial weekend when Victoria missed the demo recording of Wannabe to attend a wedding with Mark, only to discover the others had carved up the song, leaving her with just a few backing vocals. It was assumed by the public she could not sing for toffee, which was just not true. Her sometimes brittle confidence was severely shaken.
From the outset, however, Victoria stood apart from the others as she developed an enduring image, declining to leap about the stage like a ferret in a bag, preferring to shimmy her hips and smooth the skirt of a little black dress. She was the one who best understood the power of striking the right pose.
When it came for journalists to give each of them identities, her perceived aloofness suggested she should be Snobbish Spice.
Fortunately, when the Radio Times carried a quirky piece about the band, the nicknames were set as Scary, Ginger, Baby, Sporty and Posh. And while Victoria may have got a raw deal over Wannabe, she had by far the best and most enduring nickname – one that launched a million headlines and still does. She had split with Mark by the time the band
signed with soon-tobe pop mogul Simon Fuller, who secured them an excellent deal with Virgin – 16 months after Victoria had passed that first audition.
Their first press officer at Virgin, Muff Fitzgerald, presented a view of the young Victoria that contrasts with her carefully cultivated image.
He observed: “She is a little darling and always a pleasure to be around.”
The little darling is 50 next week and still updating and refining her image to conquer the world of fashion that is a better fit for her than pop ever was.
She will, however, always be “Posh”.
● Sean Smith is author of Spice Girls: The Extraordinary Lives Of Five Ordinary Women (HarperCollins, £9.99)