Rebecca Loos seesaws between irritation and jaw-tensing annoyance as she watches David Beckham on Netflix recalling the aftermath of their affair.
The former England captain speaks haltingly as if every well-chosen word requires careful extraction. It is what he doesn’t say, though, that dismays Rebecca.
It is almost 20 years since his former aide detonated a media frenzy like no other when she went public with details of their relationship. It didn’t draw much of a response from Beckham at the time. So not for a second did she think he would address the subject – albeit obliquely – after so long.
Yet attracting record-breaking viewing figures, Beckham’s self-titled Netflix series ‘tells the inside story of a global football star and cultural icon’ with no subject ‘off the table’ – even the affair. But as Rebecca notes, Beckham isn’t exactly put on the spot about it. Instead he is simply asked how he dealt with the ‘multiple tabloid stories’ it spawned.
Without referencing the liaison directly or admitting guilt – or indeed anything remotely inappropriate – Beckham, 48, says the stories were ‘horrible’ and left him ‘feeling sick every day’.
Rebecca, 47, shakes her head. ‘It’s all, “poor me”. He needs to take responsibility,’ she says, plaiting her fingers lest she might be tempted to punch the screen.
Rebecca Loos reacts to Beckham documentary: I’m not a liar
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Pictured, Rebecca Loos, now living in Norway, who worked with David Beckham in 2003
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Sometimes he secretly tried to hold her hand as they motored through Madrid. Pictured, David Beckham driving with Rebecca Loos in Madrid. Ms Loos claims to of had an affair with the football ace
‘He can say whatever he likes of course and I understand he has an image to preserve, but he is portraying himself as the victim and he’s making me look like a liar, like I’ve made up these stories.
‘He is indirectly suggesting that I’m the one who has made Victoria suffer.’
In truth, she would have rather he hadn’t spoken at all about what was, for her, a life-changing episode. To her mind, it was buried.
Long since happily married with two children, she has lived for the past 14 years in blissful obscurity in Norway where she teaches yoga and works as a medical assistant. ‘It’s not like England here, it’s much less judgmental,’ she says. ‘I used to get people coming up to me in Waitrose, right in my face, taking pictures of me with their mobiles.
‘Here people are cool about it. They don’t care. Most of them [Norwegian friends] say, “Well, I was with a married man once and I did this…” It’s like everyone has done something at some point.’
Not with married men as famous as Beckham though. And few would have faced as much opprobrium as Rebecca, the privately-educated Spanish-born diplomat’s daughter dubbed a ‘sleazy senorita’ and portrayed as sex-obsessed. She doubts whether society would judge a woman ‘so harshly’ today.
Now, because of the documentary, she has been dragged back into the limelight. And despite living in the mountains, she is not beyond harassment, though reflecting different times, it now takes a new form – vicious trolling on social media.
Sitting in a quiet corner of a hotel in the centre of Oslo, Rebecca watches Beckham expressing wonder at how he and Victoria ‘got through’ the scandal and how he managed to drag himself to training with Real Madrid.
He laments the intense pressure placed on their marriage. And so the tightly-controlled film, made by his own production company, goes on, asking of Beckham no awkward questions but bathing him in a warm, sympathy-inducing glow.
Seeing his wife hurt, he says, was ‘incredibly difficult’. His eyes moisten. Rebecca has seen enough and turns away. This in fact is her second viewing.
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Pictured, Victoria Beckham going shopping with her son Romeo and Rebecca Loos in Madrid, September 2003
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They visited bars in the trendy Chueca district ‘and we had the best croquetas in the city at a tapas place’. Pictured, David Beckham spotted clubbing with Rebecca Loos in a Madrid disco
‘Yes, the stories were horrible, but they’re true,’ she says. ‘He talks in the documentary about this ultimately being his private life, shutting it down.
‘I think it’s one thing to keep your private life to yourself. It’s another thing to mislead the public. And so many people had forgotten about all of this. So many people put all this behind them, this whole affair, the scandal and everything. And he’s dragged it back up again in a way that is affecting my reputation…
‘I think if he was going to touch on this time and how difficult it was, it would have been really nice for him to have said “it was not my proudest time”.
‘The worse bit for me is that he says he didn’t like seeing his wife suffer. That bothered me. Because he’s the one that’s caused the suffering. He could have simply said that this was a tough time and I don’t want to talk about it.
‘If you don’t want to take responsibility for things because of your family and your children that’s absolutely fine. And if he had just said it was a tough time for us and moved on I wouldn’t be here today.
‘But he specifically made it look like… my fault, that he had nothing to do with this.’
Let down, she believes, by both Beckham and the management company that employed her she sold her story – ‘it was coming out anyway so I thought I’d try to control it’ – to the now-defunct News of the World in April 2004.
Details of their brief liaison splintered the superstar’s scrupulously cultivated image.
Beckham was depicted as the paragon not just of football but of fidelity, the loving family man who exemplified 21st Century masculinity.
For a while the story reverberated across the world, posing an existential threat to Brand Beckham of which Posh Spice, of course, was the other half.
Only a few months earlier the midfielder had signed for Real Madrid and Rebecca, then 26, beautiful and unattached, was appointed his Girl Friday or client services manager as she was officially billed.
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Ms Loos says Beckham developed ‘a soft spot’ for her which was reciprocated. Pictured, Rebecca Loos attends the London Film Festival in 2008
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Pictured, the Daily Mirror frontpage on April 5, 2004 with claims insisting Rebecca Loos did have an affair with David Beckham
Since the age of 15, Beckham had spent his career safe in the bosom of Manchester United. Now alone in a strange city, 800 miles from Victoria and their two young sons, Brooklyn and Romeo, who remained in England, he was relying heavily on Rebecca who helped him navigate his new landscape.
‘He loved learning about Spanish culture, particularly food and wine,’ she recalls. ‘Once when he was under siege in his hotel I smuggled him out in the boot of my car because I wanted to show him the real Madrid.’ They visited bars in the trendy Chueca district ‘and we had the best croquetas in the city at a tapas place’.
In a short time, Beckham, she says, developed ‘a soft spot’ for her which was reciprocated. Sometimes he secretly tried to hold her hand as they motored through Madrid. And when they had lunch with the rest of his entourage he would, she says, press his sandalled toes against her own.
‘He singled me out, made me feel special,’ she says. Eventually the flirtation became sexual. On their first night together she says he seduced her. She recalls: ‘I remember turning to him and saying you’re so lucky, you can have whoever you want. And he looked me in the eyes and said, “I’ve never done this before.” I thought, “Wow”. I mean I foolishly fell for his lies.’
At this time, Rebecca was living at home with her parents, Leendert Willem Albert Loos and his Anglo-Spanish wife Elizabeth, who once corrected Brooklyn’s grammar when he asked her for ‘one of them apples’.
Rebecca says: ‘It was when they all visited [Victoria, David and the children] and she said, “Brooklyn, it’s one of those apples.”’
Laughing, she adds: ‘I said, “Mummy, you can’t say that! He’s my client”. She still corrects me about things to this day.
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Victoria Beckham speaks about the pressures around the 2004 accusations of David’s affair with Ms Loos on the Netflix documentary
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She had heard that a documentary was in the offing, but assumed it would concentrate only on Beckham’s football career. Pictured, David and Victoria Beckham on the Netflix documentary
‘When I went home the day after sleeping with him [Beckham] for the first time, Mummy asked, “Where have you been? Where did you sleep?” And I just shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t say anything. But she knew. She just looked at me and said, “Be careful”.’
Despite her mother’s warning, no amount of care would prevent exposure of their secret. At this time Beckham was one of the most stalked and scrutinised men on the planet and, almost inevitably, photos emerged of the footballer and his assistant smooching in a nightclub.
Rebecca’s story was published several months later. Noticeably failing to deny the story outright, Beckham said at the time: ‘During the past few months I have become accustomed to reading more and more ludicrous stories about my private life. What appeared this morning is just one further example.
‘The simple truth is that I am very happily married. I have a wonderful wife and two very special kids. There is nothing any third party can do to change these facts.’
It is worth noting that Rebecca has never made a secret of that fact that she has kept many of the sexually graphic messages they exchanged 20 years ago.
She says: ‘It took me a long time to decide whether to speak about this today… if I remain silent I will be known as the liar, the one who made up the stories. And I also have a family and I also have children and they also have Google and they can also watch documentaries. And I want them to know that their mother was brave enough to stand up against them and to stand up for the truth.
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Under the shepherding of PR guru Max Clifford, Ms Loos later rode the reality television carousel and made a lot of money
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Ms Loos adds that if she hadn’t had an affair she wouldn’t have taken part in a reality television series, the Dutch version of 71 Degrees North, where she met her husband
‘When I went public all those years ago I stuck precisely to facts and the truth, because I was this 26-year-old with no support behind me going up against the most powerful couple in the world who had PR people and lawyers, who had everyone behind them. If I had got the slightest thing wrong, they would have got me.’
Under the shepherding of PR guru Max Clifford, she later rode the reality television carousel and made a lot of money, although nowhere close to the £800,000 figure suggested at the time. All this seems a lifetime ago, she says.
Seeing Victoria on the documentary made her recall their first meeting. ‘They came over for the weekend – and stepped off the plane all dolled up like Barbie and Ken. They seemed really nice.
‘I went shopping with Victoria and we later hung out at the hotel together while David signed for Real Madrid. I remember her sharp sense of humour.
‘And I think she came across well on the Netflix documentary. She was very natural, very honest, very open. She had me laughing at one point. I can’t say the same for him.’
She had heard that a documentary was in the offing, but assumed it would concentrate only on Beckham’s football career. ‘I remember thinking, “Good for him, he’s a great player.”
‘I never once thought they would open up about their marriage. It went out on a Wednesday. So Thursday morning, I get up, had breakfast with the kids and checked my Instagram. I noticed I’d got a few hundred extra followers which happens from time to time. So I didn’t think much of it. I dropped the kids off at school and went to work.’
Then she began receiving calls from journalists seeking her reaction. ‘And then I suddenly realised something must have been said but I didn’t know what.
‘At home I went online and saw all the articles. I was really confused. Then I sat on the sofa and just watched that one episode and was, well shocked.’
Viewed from a distance of 20 years, her take on the affair hasn’t much altered. Then as now she feels ‘tremendous guilt’.
She says: ‘I was very sorry for what I had done and the way I handled it – but life’s biggest mistakes are the best lessons learned.’
Regrets are pointless, she says. It was never her intention to wreck the Beckhams’ marriage: ‘Never, ever, ever. I want people to be happy I want families to be happy. I don’t want to break things up.’
In any case, she adds, if she hadn’t had an affair she wouldn’t have taken part in a reality television series, the Dutch version of 71 Degrees North, where she met Norwegian Sven Christjar Skaiaa, a doctor on the show who later became her husband.
‘Things happen for a reason. And now I have a wonderful life with my incredible husband and children,’ she says.
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