Why Brooklyn denouncing his parents' greed and self-obsession was inevitable, by Beckham biographer TOM BOWER - who now reveals the unsavoury hidden drama that led to meltdown... and what happened with ex Hana Cross

Brooklyn Beckham’s nuclear Instagrams denouncing his parents’ greed and self-obsession were inevitable – a heartfelt exposure of the price he has paid for the vulgar self-promotion of the family brand.

Brooklyn might be a spoilt brat, but when it comes to sympathy, the 26-year-old wins hands down. If there were ever a victim of rapacious parents and a dysfunctional family, it’s the Beckhams’ eldest son.

Now David and Victoria fear that Brooklyn will publish a tell-all biography exposing the truth about their stormy marriage and family ‘brand’ – and they are powerless to stop that bombshell.

The explosive destruction of Brooklyn’s relationship with David and Victoria first detonated in 2022 at his $15million Palm Beach wedding to Nicola Peltz, heiress to the billionaire owner of US burger empire, Wendy’s, and much else besides.

But the roots of the estrangement stretch deeper, all the way back to the year of Brooklyn’s much-publicised birth. From his earliest years, the Beckhams’ eldest child has been manipulated by his parents for their self-enrichment. He has – as he puts it himself – been controlled by his parents for most of his life.

Arriving in the world on March 4, 1999, Brooklyn was only four months old when he found himself paraded at his parents’ grandiose Dublin wedding.

Described as the guest of honour and ring bearer, Brooklyn wore a mini-me cream suit to match his father’s – a touching detail devoured by readers of OK! magazine, which paid £1million for the rights to cover the event.

Brooklyn’s first birthday celebration for more than 100 people at a Cheshire hotel in 2000 struck another jarring note.

‘Money happy returns,’ chortled guests at the banquet.

It was around this time that David was quoted saying: ‘I have never done a photo shoot with my kids. I never have and I never will.’

Days later, he held one-year-old Brooklyn aloft at Old Trafford so that thousands could see the child wearing a Number 7 shirt with the legend ‘Beckham’ emblazoned upon it.

Victoria, meanwhile, insisted that: ‘We want Brooklyn to keep his anonymity as much as possible.’

Yet Posh and her publicist seemed happy to tip off the media, frequently telling reporters and photographers precisely where mother and baby could be spotted: at the Paradise Wildlife Park in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, for example, or during a ‘private family holiday’ at Disneyland.

‘[Brooklyn is] never going to get a bit of privacy in his life,’ whimpered David to talk-show host Michael Parkinson in 2003. ‘We’re definitely going to get Brooklyn christened,’ he continued. ‘But we don’t know into which religion.’

That was the year that David – by then captain of the England side – left Manchester United for Spanish giants Real Madrid.

A decade of upheaval followed. When his time at Real Madrid came to an end in 2007, the family moved again, choosing to live between London and Los Angeles, where David had signed a contract with LA Galaxy.

Brooklyn went through a succession of different schools and the only constant feature of his education was missing classes to accompany his parents to photoshoots, parties and promotional events. Known for never having read a book, David and Victoria did little to instil scholarly self-discipline in their child.

Understandably, David hoped his son would be a footballer.

Strings were pulled to get the 13-year-old a trial with Chelsea’s youth team. ‘He impressed his coaches,’ claimed Beckham, perhaps a little wistfully.

In the course of 2014, Brooklyn had further trials with Manchester United, Queens Park Rangers, Fulham and finally Arsenal, where he secured a place in the academy side. But the boy’s football career came to nothing.

Thereafter, Brooklyn’s only association with the game was watching games from the comfort of a directors’ box.

‘Our kids aren’t spoilt,’ insisted Victoria. ‘They aren’t kids who find everything super-super-easy. They really have to work at it.’

By then, the Beckham machine had arranged for Brooklyn to earn fees modelling for the covers of magazines including Man About Town, Reserved and Miss Vogue.

With five million Instagram followers (today he has 16million) Brooklyn had become an essential ingredient of the family’s money-making machine.

As he claimed on Instagram this week: ‘My family values public promotion and endorsements above all else. Brand Beckham comes first. Family “love” is decided by how much you post on social media, or how quickly you drop everything to show up and pose for a family photo opp’.

In the following years, the teenager was routinely seen out and about with his mother in New York and Los Angeles, or stepping down the red carpet at Hollywood premieres.

On one occasion, Brooklyn was spotted with teen actress Chloe Grace Moretz at Disneyland. Days later, the Beckhams arranged a dinner party for 17-year-old Chloe – best-known at the time for super-hero movie Kick-Ass – and their 15-year-old son in a Los Angeles restaurant. They were chaperoned by Victoria and her publicist.

By the summer of 2017, all four Beckham children – Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and even five-year-old Harper – had been registered as trademarks.

The teenager’s followers were assured by his social media feed that their hero was, ‘an exemplary young man – fit, healthy gorgeous and studies hard with a genuine passion for photography’. Yet Brooklyn’s position as eldest son could be, at times, be both invidious and plain embarrassing.

Few Beckham insiders will forget the tantrums at the 2017 Glastonbury festival. While David spent time with aristocratic socialite Lady Mary Charteris, his 18-year-old son went after singer Rita Ora, who was herself seeking same-sex companionship with bisexual model Cara Delevingne.

Arriving on the scene by helicopter, Victoria was incandescent with rage and the Beckhams were soon embroiled in ferocious argument. It was reportedly down to Brooklyn to act as peacemaker.

‘Don’t worry Dad, I’ll get you a drink,’ he said, returning with a double gin and tonic. For his mother, meanwhile, Brooklyn offered a shoulder to cry on.

‘They looked quite miserable,’ said one eyewitness, ‘but they managed to pose for the cameras.’

That same year, Brooklyn enrolled on a photography degree at New York’s prestigious Parsons School of Design. Naturally, the young man was given his own driver and a bodyguard.

He quit after less than a year, supposedly deferring his four-year course to start an internship with a ‘prestigious photographer’ in the UK.

‘Brooklyn’s photography career is going from strength to strength,’ said the Beckhams’ spokesman. There was a peculiar truth in that: Victoria had arranged for her boy to be an official photographer for Burberry and BMW. Meanwhile, Brooklyn was telling friends that he aimed to become a rapper.

By 2019, Brooklyn – aged just 20 – was worth £6.5million according to the Sunday Times Rich List, and had amassed 11.5million Instagram followers.

Now a celebrity in his own right, he started stepping out with a 22-year-old model from Yorkshire called Hana Cross. Whereupon the brand managers seemingly interfered.

The family publicist disclosed that his mother and Hana were ‘getting on famously’, not least because Posh was establishing herself as a fashion designer and the young model wore her clothes.

But it was a different matter for Brooklyn and Hana, who were having ferocious arguments in public.

Fearing the model might walk out and sign a ‘kiss-and-tell’ deal, the Beckhams reportedly asked Brooklyn to hand over a non-disclosure agreement guaranteeing her silence. Brooklyn refused.

Events at the Cannes film festival in May 2019 did nothing to ease their fears. Sitting on the terrace of the £3,000-per-night Hotel Martinez – having flown in by private jet – Brooklyn and Hana came to blows in what startled onlookers called ‘a vicious brawl’. Security guards reportedly tried to separate them.

The relationship was soon at an end, but there were other opportunities. Brooklyn was described as having an ‘astonishing success rate with girls’ and was once again told by his parents to ‘dish out’ non-disclosure agreements.

He continued to refuse, especially when it came to his latest flame, an American billionaire’s daughter called Nicola Peltz.

Brooklyn and Nicola announced their engagement after just four months with a £250,000 emerald-cut diamond ring. A £7.5million home in Beverly Hills soon followed.

The Beckhams were delighted but assumed that they would be accepted at their own estimation by Nicola’s parents, Nelson and Claudia. Having mixed with Hollywood stars, the Beckhams foolishly expected the Peltzs to greet them like royalty.

Yet the two families were separated by a cultural chasm: the Beckhams’ estimated £500million fortune hardly compared with Nelson Peltz’s £1.3billion.

Not that Brooklyn or Nicola were resting on their laurels when it came to their own pursuit of cash and publicity. To his parents’ alarm, Brooklyn was breaking out of the family business – and their control.

In the weeks before their big day, Brooklyn won a contract to front the Superdry fashion label while Nicola was contracted to wear Pepe Jeans. Each contract was supposedly worth £1million.

In a new bid for fame, Brooklyn introduced himself to the world as a celebrity chef. A crew of 62 people helped him film ‘Cookin’ with Brooklyn’, an eight-minute video in which he made a sandwich.

‘It does help to be creative,’ he told the cameras as he spread mayonnaise over a slice of bread and smeared a bagel with coleslaw.

Fortunately, a crew member – supported by nine producers – held a crib sheet to help him identify the utensils required as he fried an egg and placed it on some bread. The recipe, he told viewers, had been guarded by his family for ‘generations’.

Brooklyn’s approach was crass, but successful. Millions of followers tuned in to shower him with praise, especially when he posed in pink trousers to promote Wendy’s (the burger chain owned by his future father-in-law).

The wedding proved harder to manage. The weeks before the three-day celebration in April 2022 – which saw 300 guests gather at the Peltz’s ocean-front estate – brought a blizzard of emails and recriminations.

The gossip machine went into overdrive. It was suggested, for example, that Brooklyn had signed a ‘pre-nup’; that Nicola had spent $83,000 on her hair and make-up; and that Nicola had complained the flowers ‘aren’t white enough’.

She was reportedly in tears when, on the wedding day itself, singer Marc Anthony dedicated his first song – and the start of the dancing – not to the bride and groom but to Brooklyn and Victoria, although exactly how the events of that day played out have been disputed. What is beyond doubt, however, is that the fuse was well and truly lit.

Nicola did nothing to hide her dislike of her new mother-in-law. She rarely added ‘likes’ – a crucial currency in the social media world – to Victoria’s posts. Only five out of Victoria’s 131 posts following the wedding earned the bride’s on-screen approval.

Apparently in retaliation, Victoria ignored the glossy wedding and honeymoon photoshoot when it was published in Vogue magazine.

Next, Brooklyn turned down his parents’ offer to spend the summer of 2022 on the Beckhams’ new boat. Instead, he sailed across the Mediterranean on Nelson Peltz’s gin palace, explaining that his ‘number one priority,’ was Nicola. To make the point, he renamed himself Brooklyn Peltz Beckham.

If Victoria was hurt, worse was to come. In an interview with Grazia magazine that same year, Nicola accused Posh of ‘ghosting’ amid disputed claims that the fashion-designer had agreed, then failed, to make a dress for the occasion. The row threatened to poison relations forever.

In 2024, attempting to make peace, Victoria invited Nicola and Brooklyn to her Paris fashion show, but it was clearly too little, too late.

Sitting apart from his family, Brooklyn and Nicola looked uncomfortable, especially when David Beckham arrived on the scene with 11-year-old Harper clad in a £2,000 silk-and-lace dress. Harper hugged Brooklyn but not Nicola.

Then, at the end of the show, Victoria burst into tears as Nicola and Brooklyn left without staying for a steak-and-chips dinner with the Beckham family near the Eiffel Tower. Instead, the couple met Claudia Peltz.

Nicola chose not to praise Victoria’s fashion show online, preferring to leave an enigmatic post that read: ‘No family is perfect’.

Few would disagree with the sentiment, least of all her husband.

Today, Brooklyn has made up his mind with admirable courage: he wants a divorce from the manipulative, stunt-strewn, money-hungry family back at home.

David and Victora can only hope that the storm passes, and with it the threat of a book packed with explosive, first-hand claims about their greedy manipulation of those around them. Otherwise it’s RIP Brand Beckham.

• Tom Bower - House of Beckham: Money, Sex and Power is published by Harper Collins