Culture

There is one footballer who will be under particular scrutiny at the Qatar World Cup – but not because he’s playing in it. David Beckham retired as a player, aged 38 in 2013, but nine years on his stature has continued to grow. The former England captain’s profile is so high that those tasked with the tricky job of getting positive publicity for Qatar agreed to pay him a reported £10 million to plug the tournament.  This is the story of my role as a cog in the wheels of the media machine that helped propel Beckham to this position – and of one particular incident, involving surreptitious snaps of

When the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, they found a file titled ‘Info re: President of France’. Many have speculated (with no little encouragement from Trump himself) that it contains illicit details of Emmanuel Macron’s sex life.  Whatever the truth about this particular cache, political kompromat has long been a source of great drama – both on and off screen. Some bring it upon themselves – Gary Hart blew his chances of securing the US Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 by inviting reporters to dig up dirt on him (‘Follow me around, put a tail on me. You’d be very bored’). They promptly did – and the events surrounding the 51-year-old