Victoria Beckham: why do so many of you hate her so much? Photograph: Branimir Kvartuc/AP
I love Victoria Beckham. And admire her. As a recording artist, as a human being, and as a woman. She's warm and witty, original, genuine, beautiful, deeply misunderstood ...
No, I'm never going to get away with that. But she's not that bad either, is she? Why do so many of you hate her so much? And more so now after the airing of her one-off reality show.
It was vapid, you say, and fake. Yes it was. This was reality TV in the same way as those are reality breasts (now gone so far north they're practically poking her eyeballs out). Of course it was all scripted (this is television, not the truth). Victoria cheating in the written test for her American driving licence? Nope, I'm pretty sure that never happened. You were outraged to find out that her "personal assistant" was played by an actor? I would have been surprised if she hadn't been. Come on, the programme was made by the company that manages Victoria; what did you expect - Panorama?
Admit it though, you watched it through to the end didn't you? Because it was strangely gripping. And what made it so watchable was ... Victoria Beckham. She's funny.
"It's exhausting being fabulous," she declares. Good line.
"I've no idea why anyone would think I'm a blow-up doll," she says, after sending one off in a car to fool the (probably fake) paparazzi. Then she goes and does a blow-up doll face, to show she knows she is one. See? It's funny, I think genuinely so. And she's also demonstrating she does have a sense of her own ridiculousness, a rare thing in someone so concerned about their own image.
The scene where she visits her extraordinary Desperate Grandmothers neighbours is priceless - they're laughing at her, she's laughing at them, everyone's using each other. It's a wonderful mixture of cultural misunderstanding, of pretension, of fact and fiction, and of extraordinary make-up and grooming. Then one of the ladies suddenly does her dolphin impersonation - possibly the TV highlight of the month. And Victoria gets drunk.
These are the best bits, where she apparently isn't taking herself too seriously. If she did that more often, relaxed a bit, allowed herself to be herself, she could even have a future in television, because there's something there.
But you haters should think about relaxing too. Hold back your bile for a more deserving victim. Come on, it's only Posh Spice, not Myra Hindley.
