Beckham’s a victim of cultural snobbery

THE usual snobbery accompanied the news that David Beckham would be the castaway on the 75th anniversary edition of Desert Island Discs.

Conservative MP Sir Bill Cash sniffed that the BBC should have picked ‘a Nobel Prize winner, a really great author or a cultural icon’. Nobel prize winners, Sir Bill? Name one. Seriously. There were five British Nobel laureates in 2016, but none would be greatly familiar to the public.

Maybe the BBC should have asked Oliver Hart (economics) to discuss his landmark 1975 work, On the Optimality of Equilibrium when the Market Structure is Incomplete; or Fraser Stoddart (chemistry) could have talked us through his molecular machines; or David J Thouless, F Duncan Haldane and J Michael Kosterlitz (physics) their theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.

It might have cost a bit on air fares, mind you: all but Thouless are United States residents, and Thouless was for much of his working life. He is back here now; and 82. So, unable to attract the calibre of person Cash would like to hear from — no less a talent than John Major did the 50th anniversary in 1992 — the BBC has turned instead to Beckham (below): one of the most recognisable faces on the planet, and among this country’s most successful athletes. An OBE, the only English player to win four league titles in different countries, a former England captain, 115 international appearances, and married to fashion designer, ex-Spice Girl and also an OBE, Victoria Beckham. How dreadful. Why would we wish to broadcast some sweaty footballer, and not a winner of The Great British Bake Off (Nadiya Hussain, a guest in 2016) or Ant and Dec (2013)? The BBC really are dumbing down.