As an appetiser to the tournament about to swamp your television, the BBC paired up one global football brand with another: Becks, meet Brazil; Brazil, meet Becks. Appropriately the encounter lasted 90 minutes, and featured long stretches in which the two tentative participants probed and prodded at each other, interleaved by occasional brief flare-ups of drama.
The BBC told the story of Brazil only recently through the portal of Michael Palin. Where Palin took an avuncular stroll through the country's history, geography and culture, Beckham’s researches erred towards the slightly more skin-deep. What’s the view like from the favela? Any chance of chips with that fish you just caught and filleted? And does that snake under one's hammock tend to bite? The fans who tuned in to David Beckham into the Unknown will have gone away knowing little more about the state of the rainforest and recent social unrest in the World Cup's host nation. They will however be able to take an extra module in that Beckham Studies course apparently on offer at a Midlands university.
Beckham set off in search of anonymity in front of however many millions at home
This was at least as much a film about Beckham, a man who can’t walk down a street without getting RSI from autograph hunters. The idea was for him to get away from it all in the company of three similarly bearded pals – two Americans (a camera guy, a motorbike guy) and a Mancunian also called David. Brazil being the football-obsessed country it is, you have to go quite a long way off the beach and into the jungle to find someone who doesn’t know Becks from a plate of sardines. After a stop-off in Rio, that is precisely where the documentary went.
First things first, though. At Palazzo Beckham in the heart of London, Victoria had just one travel tip. “What you going to do about your hair? I don’t even go to humid countries 'cos of my hair. You should wear a hat through the whole thing.“ Ever uxorious, for half the trip he wore a helmet as the leathered-up posse slalomed and skidded on two wheels into the rainforest.
Having first let the cameras invade his privacy like some sort of Osborne or Kardashian, Beckham set off in search of anonymity in front of however many millions watching at home. The further he penetrated into the jungle – by bike, boat and eventually four-seater plane – the less they knew about him and the wider the grin on the face that launched a thousand ad campaigns. By the end of the trip he'd encountered an Amazonian tribe who were fairly shaky about football, let alone its most famous brand ambassador. “Are you a leader?” asked a leader wearing nothing but a posing pouch. “What kind of work do you do in your land?”
This was I’m a Celebrity as shot by Hello! TV, with no bushtucker trials or audience sadism. Beckham is always Beckham, an iconic clotheshorse chiselled to perfection, with a good heart and a pleasant way about him, but not – bless him – the sharpest tool in the box as a guide to Brazil’s interior. Nor indeed his own. He said he did a lot of thinking, and banged on a great deal about his kids, but this vast wilderness within remains terra incognita.
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