David Beckham’s days as an underwear model are numbered.
Credit: Getty
If you only knew of David Beckham’s existence through billboard posters, you’d swear that the man lives his life in tiny trunks. The 39-year-old’s latest collaboration with Swedish retail chain H&M does little to dismiss that image. This time the tattooed body beautiful has launched, in his words, “a simple, old Bond movie-inspired” swimwear range of board shorts, trunks and swim shorts as part of David Beckham Bodywear for H&M. Metro chats to Becks about stripping down, movie cameos and why tighty whities are his trunk of choice.
You’ve worn many different styles of swimwear over the years but which is your preferred cut?
I’ve kind of always gone for the tighter smaller swimwear, personally. I’m sure there’s gonna be a point where I’m not going to like it as much. But at the moment and from a very young age I’ve always gone for the tighter smaller white ones. One of my first actual holidays with Victoria — we’d only been together for about eight months — I remember wearing a tight Gucci pair, which was quite daring but I was obviously trying to get her attention. I wouldn’t wear the smaller tighter ones walking down the beach with my kids. They’d be embarrassed.
Speaking of embarrassment, how do your boys feel about you wearing such a revealing style? Have you achieved embarrassing dad status?
[Chortles] They do give me the embarrassing dad look when they walk past a billboard of myself. My mum does exactly the same. She will call up and say, “I’ve just walked past a huge billboard of you in your underwear.” The boys are used to it now. The boys will kind of actually take selfies of themselves of me and my underwear.
You have to stay in great shape for these campaigns. Don’t you ever want to just kick back with a beer?
Yeah, I do that anyway. I just have to make sure I work out in the morning after. To be honest, I actually don’t really work out every single day. I always take the boys and Harper to school. Trying to find time to workout during the day is pretty difficult.
For how many more years are you going to keep stripping down?
Not many more. I’m not trying to get away from that but obviously I’m 39 years old now and I don’t think people want to see me in my underwear beyond this age. I’m still comfortable doing it but there will be a point pretty soon that I’ll hang my underwear up.
Once you’ve hung up your underwear, are you going to move into acting? Maybe a cameo in a Bond movie?
Um, no. I never wanted to go into acting in any kind of way: I’ve dipped in and I’ve dipped out. I’ve enjoyed doing certain things and when I’ve done it’s always been done pretty well. I’ve been working with great directors like Guy Ritchie. And obviously the Sport Relief with Only Fools and Horses was so special but acting has never been something that I’ve kind of wanted to go into. But you never know, you never know.
