'Does my tum look fat in this?'

YOU don't expect to see David Beckham half-naked in a room full of felt hats, but this is where I found him six weeks ago, in a photo studio deep in darkest Manchester.

Actually, the city was sunnier than London that day, as was Beckham's mood. While he happily tried on fedoras and trilbys, he slowly moved his body in time to the blaring stereo, nodding his head enthusiastically to Usher and Zero 7. Naked from the waist up, his torso covered in baby oil, his fingernails painted jet black and wearing a pristine pair of Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche baggy pants, he didn't exactly look like your archetypal British footballer.

But, then, Beckham never has.

As he stood there, with his hair dyed yellow especially for the GQ shoot, he placed a white fedora on the top of his head, immediately looking like David Bowie during his Thin White Duke period.

He then turned to me, smiling that unmistakable Beckham smile, and said, rhetorically, "How do I look?" How did he look? Well, like the coolest man in Britain.

We had decided ages ago that we'd like to photograph Beckham for a story to coincide with the World Cup. We started negotiations back in August, and when he finally agreed, set about finding a photographer we both liked. After dozens of meetings, we decided on David LaChapelle, the hip American fashion photographer whose iconic portraits of everyone from Britney Spears and Courtney Love to Madonna and Leonardo DiCaprio have made him one of the most sought- after in the world.

The shoot was the most expensive in GQ's history, costing more than pounds 30,000.

We flew LaChapelle and his team over from LA and, by the time Beckham turned up, there were 20 professionals primed to cater to his every whim, including a makeup artist, set builder, hairdresser, security men, drivers, caterers, even a DJ and me, worrying about how much it was costing.

Then there was Victoria, Brooklyn and David Furnish, Brooklyn's godfather and the man we'd asked to interview Beckham for GQ.

Beckham had obviously done some extravagant shoots before, but even I'd never seen him dressed in denim cut-offs, bench-pressing in a mock-up gym, looking like a muscle-bound stevedore on Venice Beach. At first I couldn't believe that LaChapelle had managed to persuade Beckham to do this, but you only have to spend a little time in Beckham's company to understand that he doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do. As far as pictures are concerned, his wife doesn't make his decisions for him, nor do photographers or stylists. We, of course, discussed what clothes we'd be using, and what type of photographs we hoped to achieve, but every final decision was his (only once did I hear Victoria shout, "David, no!").

In fact, he has more of an understanding of his public profile than almost any celebrity I've met (perhaps only Bowie and Madonna have more). He knew what jewellery he wanted to wear, what scarves he should be shot in, and in particular where to draw the line between glam and camp. "He's just like a rock star," said our fashion director, as Beckham lay back on the studio floor with his hands down his trousers. "Only a rock star could do this!"

As David Furnish chased Brooklyn around the studio, and as Victoria sat and talked about her recent TV documentary, Becks spent 20 minutes making sure his hat was tilted just so. "David cares more about his clothes than almost anyone I've ever met," said Furnish, as Brooklyn wrapped himself around his legs. "He knows exactly what suits him and he always looks fantastic. He is going to love these pictures."

The picture that concerned him most was a shot featuring a fake tiger-skin theatrical prop. We wanted him to drape it over his shoulders just like Steve McQueen had done for the legendary American photographer William Claxton back in the Sixties.

Knowing that Beckham currently has a penchant for McQueen, we encouraged him to try it. The initial Polaroid looked amazing, although Beckham was worried that some people might think the skin was real (it wasn't). We convinced him otherwise, and we ended up with possibly the best pictures of the entire session.

"He's just like Muhammad Ali," said LaChapelle between set-ups.

"He's the greatest and the prettiest."

Another picture involved him wearing a pair of Richard James beaded boxer shorts, under a pair of elephantine Michiko Koshino jeans, in the style of P.

Diddy.

Beckham has obviously made something of a parallel career out of wearing outrageous underwear, but I don't think he's ever worn pants as outrageous as these.

I last saw him a couple of weeks ago, at the Adidas headquarters in Stockport. As I showed him the results of the LaChapelle shoot, he whizzed through the pictures, generally nodding his approval, occasionally grimacing, and making the sort of astute compositional comments you might expect from the most photographed man in Britain.

As he worked his way through the pictures, he picked one out, and, without irony, turned to me and asked: "Does my stomach look fat in this?"

It didn't of course, and it doesn't, but then I think he knew that already.

Dylan Jones is editor of GQ.

Copyright 2002
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