It seems Rebecca Loos is telling the truth about David Beckham, but ironically it may boost his image, writes Róisín Ingle
For a while there were three of them in the marriage. Five, if you count the mobile phones. After two weeks of blanked-out sex text messages, happy family photos, wishy-washy denials, fresh claims of adultery and threats of legal action, the Becks Sex Scandal culminated in an appearance on television by a confident, attractive, elegant young woman who, to the horror of hardcore Beckham admirers, seemed to be telling the truth about her trysts with the Real Madrid star.
The ghost of Princess Diana was everywhere in Sky One's ratings-gobbling interview with Rebecca Loos, the woman whose detailed claims of an affair with the footballer have shattered the image of David and Victoria Beckham as paragons of marital bliss.
"I adored him," said Loos of Beckham more than once during the hour-long interview on Thursday night. It's almost 10 years since Diana was interviewed on television by Martin Bashir and used exactly the same phrase about her lover, James Hewitt.
It was, incidentally, the death of Diana in 1997 that saved the Beckhams from becoming just another celebrity couple and propelled them, for better or worse, towards their current iconic status. As a country mourned there was a rush to replace the princess with something equally gossip-worthy, image-driven and glamorous.
Then there is Loos, who has the same long nose, the same doe-eyed expression and the same coy tilt of the head as Diana. She is also, since the news broke, the possessor of a tabloid persona that is less Queen of Hearts, more Queen of Tarts. While it's hard to feel sorry for Beckham's former personal assistant - nobody forced her to sell her story to the News of the World - it's a label she will never be able to live down.
Despite this, the unfortunately named Loos looked calm and composed throughout the interview, revealing that she didn't fancy Beckham at the beginning. He wasn't her type, she said, to the sound of jaws dropping in disbelief across the world. The affair eventually began after a visit to a nightclub in Madrid when Beckham asked her back to his hotel. She painted a picture of a lonely football star in a foreign country where he couldn't speak the language, missing his wife - who turns 30 today - and his two sons. He was, she said, in need of affection, a cuddle, some company.
From the beginning of their conversation, interviewer Kay Burley abandoned all pretence that Sky's coverage of the story had anything to do with serious current affairs, acting as though Loos was her errant but ultimately loveable friend who had embarked on an improper fling about which she was desperate to extract every detail. When Loos, immaculately groomed in an elegant green top, jumped off her chair to help Burley, a vision of girliness in a flower print dress, scroll through those famous text messages, the tone of the hour-long programme was established.
Burley could hardly contain herself. "Every woman in the world wants to know what happened next," she trilled as Loos described being escorted at speed by Beckham and a bodyguard through a hotel corridor to get to his luxury suite. It soon became clear that whatever else PR guru Max Clifford has done for Rebecca Loos - the handsome kiss 'n' tell fees, the mooted TV career - he schooled her well in tabloid-speak even if it sometimes sounded comical delivered in her posh Diana-esque accent.
Loos and Becks were drawn together "like magnets". When Becks fed her strawberries she felt like "a million dollars". He was "a very generous lover". They "couldn't keep \ hands off each other". Beckham "knows how to please" and "isn't afraid of a woman's body". Loos also claims to know something about a part of Beckham's body that only a person who had been intimate with him would know. She will even swear to it in court. Happy birthday, Victoria.
Like the rest of us, the public relations industry is fascinated by Rebecca Loos V The Beckhams. Sinead Ryan of Presence PR says the saga is "a PR battle being played out at the highest level with two highly skilled proponents on each side".
"It's difficult to say who is winning because we don't yet know, and we may never know, the full details and, more importantly, we don't know for certain which one of them has truth on their side," she adds.
Ryan has noticed that the overall tone of the coverage has not been sympathetic towards the former Spice Girl. "There is definitely a sense that people are glad the marriage has problems and they are happy to see the rug being pulled from under Posh and her perfect life," she says.
She felt Loos acquitted herself well on television, coming across as "honest and natural". At one point in the interview Loos candidly declared that the exclusively sexual nature of her relationship with Beckham made her feel "like a whore".
"I liked the way she didn't exaggerate the affair and made it clear that it quickly developed into a purely sexual relationship. She could have made the two of them sound like Romeo and Juliet, but she did quite the opposite," says Ryan.
While much has been made of the damage wrought by the scandal on the lucrative Beckham brand, some experts believe the claims may, in the long run, do more good than harm. Peter Kruseman, brand design consultant with Enterprise IG, says the Beckham brand was "pretty vacant" until two weeks ago.
"People projected whatever they wanted on to the Beckhams, whether it was their idea of the perfect marriage or the perfect family or the perfect man, because up until now the brand was pretty much a blank canvas," he says. "Now Beckham has been shown to be human and that makes him even more accessible. The perfect family brand may be damaged but in his own right he could prove an even more profitable marketing tool than before." Beckham's popularity in France has rocketed in the wake of the allegations, his brand attaining more cachet with allegations that he was unfaithful.
Victoria Beckham is said to have disconnected the Sky satellite in her home in case anyone close to her tuned into the programme on Thursday night. Her husband, who rejected the adultery claims as "ludicrous", "absurd" and "unsubstantiated" last week, is reported to have bought her a £1 million pink diamond ring with matching earrings for her birthday. Diamonds are forever, but whether the most talked-about marriage in the world has a similar life-span is the question on everyone's lips - even Rebecca Loos's.
The woman who lost her "dream job" as personal assistant to a star when pictures of herself and Beckham chatting in a Madrid nightclub were published last September told Burley she hoped the Beckhams would stay together.
"It was wrong to have done what I did . . . but it did happen and I am not going to live with a lie," she said, before adding pointedly: "I am not the one trying to sell an image of myself as a fairytale". The Beckhams, on the other hand, have spent the last few years selling exactly that.
"Me? Jealous?" countered Loos incredulously when Burley asked whether she envied Mrs Beckham.
"Not at all. I am sad, if anything. There is nothing that woman has that I could possibly want, including David Beckham."