It might be because I’ve been in my Taylor Swift bubble (more on that from me soon on here) , but the new book about The Beckhams doesn’t seem to have cut through, does it? I can’t find anyone who’s talking about it, or has even shown any interest in any of the ‘revelations’ contained within. Amongst my journalist friends, the consensus seems to be that it doesn’t really contain anything new or surprising.
Though there is a surprise in there for me: the fact that I rate a couple of mentions. And that’s surprising on a few counts.
Number one: I have no juicy revelations to offer anyone about the Beckhams. I’ve never met David and I’ve had nothing but a handful of professional - and positive - interactions with Victoria.
Secondly, the book’s author, Tom Bower, had asked me repeatedly, over the course of about eight weeks, to please sit down with him over what he promised would be a ‘fun lunch’ to be interviewed about my dealings with Victoria. In particular he wanted to hear from me about how it came to pass that she was given a few trophies at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards in my time as Glamour editor. My immediate instinct was a double thumbs down. Tom’s books are not exactly known as fanzines. As I explained to him, I don’t know the Beckhams but we do have friends in common. I’d hate any of our mutual friends to think I’d willingly helped facilitate what I suspected - correctly - would be a pretty nasty book.
I just saw no point in aligning myself with that. I’m not perfect by any means, but I don’t go searching for unnecessary bad Karma. Even though I knew I didn’t have much in the way of useful information, and even though I knew nothing negative would come out of my mouth about the Beckhams, I was uneasy about how anything I might say would end up being used. I checked in with another magazine editor who I had a hunch would also be approached by Tom. They confirmed they were and had not had any of the promised fun at a lunch. So I took a note of Tom’s number and stopped answering the calls.
So, the third surprise was in finding myself still name checked in the book, with Tom’s opinions about my dealings with Victoria and her team presented as facts. I want to stress that I am very aware that my mentions in this book are a passing snippet, a tiny footnote in the grand scheme. It totals about eight sentences. But I’m just amazed at how inaccurate these tiny mentions are. The first paragraph to mention me says this:
‘To reap publicity in the wider media, Glamour magazine’s Jo Elvin was enticed to shower praise on Victoria. Elvin welcomed the opportunity to associate her magazine with a star. Like other editors of celebrity and fashion magazines, Elvin never troubled herself about the Beckhams’ controversies. Focused on sales, she bowed to secure Victoria’s face on her magazine’s front cover.’
There’s a lot for me to unpack in these very few sentences. I’ll try to break it down:
“Jo Elvin was enticed to shower praise on Victoria.”
There was no enticing. Trust me, the whole team behind Victoria, including Natalie Lewis and Jo Milloy, were not even slightly bothered with whether or not Glamour was interested in Victoria. And I say this with nothing but love, I like them both very much. I’m just a realist. Once Victoria was on the radar with Vogue Magazine and other more niche fashion magazines like Love and 10, Victoria and her team were not bothered about coverage in the more mass, commercial magazines. I featured her as and when I could because I knew readers were interested in her. In my 17 years at Glamour, I was granted one cover shoot with Victoria. In 2002. We actually split the run and did three different covers for one issue, but I can only find this one online.
Her mum, Jackie, was on the photo shoot - helping to babysit toddler Brooklyn - joke-whinged to me when I told her we would doing three different covers. ‘Oh god, do you have to? I’m already running out of wall space for all her covers!’
She reappeared on our cover in 2008 but I was not permitted a photo shoot. I had to be satisfied with a ‘buy in’. That means a cover photo that has already run on another magazine, in this case America’s Allure. It was always a last ditch option for me because everyone in the industry knows it’s not original, and then celebrity publicists do see you as a lesser magazine who will run everyone else’s sloppy seconds. It starts a spiral of being denied photo shoots.
I question Tom’s use of the word ‘enticed’, like I was somehow being bribed to be nice to Victoria within Glamour. The idea that she and her team were begging me to put her on my covers, or begging me to shower her with praise, or that I was being hoodwinked in some way to feature her, is just garbage. I was simply in the business of featuring celebrities who I thought might encourage readers to buy the magazine. You know, my job?
“Elvin welcomed the opportunity to associate her magazine with a star.”
That is true, yes. That is what all magazine editors are programmed to want for their magazines. Victoria has always been a mesmeric figure for many, particularly the Glamour-age audience when I was editor. So guess what, I was very keen to feature celebrities who our readers wanted to know about. Again, just doin’ my job, Tom, you have not uncovered some dastardly deeds here I was trying to conceal.
“Like other editors of celebrity and fashion magazines, Elvin never troubled herself about the Beckhams’ controversies.”
Which controversies are we talking about? Did I miss their trials at The Hague or something? Is writing about and photographing celebrities only valid if you’re raking over all the perceived negatives of their private lives? I’ve never understood the instinct to treat celebrities as criminals in interviews, guilty of…. ‘something’ until proven innocent.
The sneering embedded in ‘like other editors of celebrity and fashion magazines’ made me laugh. It’s a familiar snobbishness that derides magazines as ‘lesser’ than other forms of journalism. Glamour’s ethos was that if someone was on our cover, it was because our readers liked them, so we were generally positive about every one of our cover stars. Which I know is seen as the worst possible offence in some corners of journalism, but I’m fine with that.
Also, as Tom and I have never had one conversation about the Beckhams, how the hell does he know what particular controversies left me ‘untroubled’ or otherwise?
“Focused on sales, she bowed to secure Victoria’s face on her magazine’s front cover.”
Well now, you’ve nailed me to the cross there, Tom. I was focused on sales. When you are a magazine editor, your job is to sell magazines. So I tried really hard, month in and month out, for more than 25 years, to do just that. For every magazine I’ve ever edited, including Glamour.
I ‘bowed’ did I? Still not sure what these terrible crimes were of Victoria’s that I was wilfully, immorally ignoring in my rabid desperation to associate with a star. This supposed door-matting of myself to secure Victoria’s face on my magazine’s front cover? As explained above, there’s not much evidence that that was really working out for me, so not sure how Tom has landed on this assertion.
Also, just a quick question: Is my ‘focus on magazine sales’ any better or worse than a focus on book sales that’s driven a person to scramble around to find as much muck as you can from people’s private lives?
The other mention is in this paragraph:
‘Victoria’s publicists negotiated that she would be Woman of the Year at Glamour’s 25th anniversary. Accompanied by 16 year-old Brooklyn at the New York ceremony, she did not mention publicly that David was in Argentina. Jo Elvin’s potted biography was selective. ‘After the Spice Girls - amicably - went their separate ways. Victoria Beckham had a brief solo career but decided to devote most of her time to being a mom.’
Where to begin with this? Hilariously, it appears to me to be a jumble of information gleaned about the British and American editions of Glamour and mashed together - incorrectly.
In 2013, Victoria attended the UK Glamour Women of the Year Awards with Brooklyn. We honoured her with an award entitled ‘woman of the decade’ and did so because of her enduring and chameleonic career as well as the fact that she was so incredibly popular with our readers. Yes, it’s also true that I knew if she attended our event, it was a guarantee of us getting blanket, international coverage for the magazine. Again, just doing my job.
Her publicists did not come to me begging me to do this. We approached them with the idea. I remember Jo Milloy and I having a tiff because, despite being up for attending the event, Victoria was still not at all interested in featuring on Glamour’s cover. It was not our 25th anniversary. At that time, UK Glamour was a 12-year-old magazine. I don’t remember ever really giving a toss where David was or for why. It was the Women of the Year Awards, so it would have been a bit off of me to feel the night wasn’t complete without someone’s husband in tow.
I can see from a quick Google search that Victoria and Brooklyn attended US Glamour’s Women of Year Awards in New York in 2015. Maybe that’s where the quote featuring the word ‘mom’ comes from, but it’s not me. American Glamour magazine launched in 1939, so it wasn’t their 25th anniversary in 2015 either.
I’m sure if I put these corrections to Tom Bower he would roll his eyes and dismiss their importance. But I just think, if you’re going to sniff down your nose at silly, lightweight women’s press, it will possibly have more impact if you don’t then lazily phone in your own journalistic research. Just a thought. Tom could have easily sent me a few questions on email just to check basic facts, but something tells me my boring corrections would have gotten in the way of a predetermined narrative about women’s mags.
Makes you wonder what else in the book might be a little wide of the mark, doesn’t it?
The (very) few things I have read about the book have said it is nothing more than a collection of every single negative thing and rumour about the Beckhams put together in one place, and most of the 'sources' referenced in the footnotes are dates of the magazines in which the statement was first made. I can't help but feel a bit sorry for Tom and the amount of time he wasted on it
Here's a link to a second 2002 cover: https://media.glamourmagazine.co.uk/photos/6138ae0369a8a3323e6d8a99/master/w_320%2Cc_limit/Feb02_b.jpg
Such a load of poppycock. And I completely agree. NOBODY is reading and talking about this book….