AMANDA PLATELL: Why I discovered Harper Beckham’s purple carpet look so deeply inappropriate
When Harper Beckham appeared at Harper’s Bazaar magazine’s Women of the Year awards to give mum Victoria an award for entrepreneurship, she said it was a school night and hoped she wouldn’t get into trouble.
It was a sweet moment but it worried me. Harper wore a flesh-baring, silver sheath dress – from mum’s VB fashion label, naturally – and I thought it was deeply inappropriate.
Victoria Beckham with her 13-year-old daughter Harper at the Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year Awards this month
Harper is a just kid! She’s 13! What the hell is her mother doing projecting her onto the world stage to promote her own business. No sooner had Harper left the stage than mum had uploaded a video of her girl applying Vic’s range of make-up. There was Harper using a £26 lip definer sealed with a £30 clear lip gloss.
Sources close to the Beckhams say Dad David is unhappy his little girl is becoming part of the VB brand. He didn’t attend the event, just drove Harper to it at Claridge’s, one of the poshest hotels in London’s Mayfair. Afterwards, the teenager was whisked home in a £100,000 chauffeur-driven Maserati alongside a security guard. What kind of life is that for a child?
Already Harper’s name has been trademarked for commercial use and she is saying her ambition in life is to ‘create an amazing brand’, like her mum’s.
Ambition is no bad thing at any age. But my fear is that Harper could miss out on a normal childhood. Let her be friends with school pals, have sleepovers, PJ parties, not thinking every moment must be caught on Instagram to boost her mum’s career or her own future in fashion.
Time for you to protect your child and preserve her innocence, David. And bask in the fact that the relationship between dad and daughter is, as I know, one of life’s most precious gifts.
Victoria Beckham shared a video of Harper getting ready for the Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year awards using Victoria Beckham Beauty Lip Liner and Posh Gloss in Ice
Harper Beckham tries out a new hand cream from her mother’s beauty brand
Top of Amazon’s most wanted Christmas presents for kids is a £59.99 Play-Doh Pizza Delivery Scooter. Crikey, given 12 per cent of two to 10-year-olds are already obese, it’s hardly a healthy choice.
William the Great
Prince William says this has been the toughest year of his life, that it’s been ‘brutal’ after his father and wife were diagnosed with cancer.
William was raised in a warring family as his parents’ marriage disintegrated, he then lost his mum Diana and became estranged from his hate-filled brother Harry.
It speaks volumes about his character that he carries on with dignity, lovingly fulfilling his most important role – as a devoted husband and dad.
We see through Kate
Kate Moss, 50, appears as the face of Yves Saint Laurent’s latest campaign wearing a strip of clingfilm over her breasts. Can this be the same Kate who, when recalling modelling topless as a teenager, said it made her feel ‘objectified, scared and vulnerable’. Maybe the massive pay cheque was enough to stiffen her resolve.
Kate Moss at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show in New York last month
Stars and Strife
- The thin-lipped, closed-mouth kiss on the cheek Melania Trump gave her husband as he puckered up on victory night was reminiscent of that famous ‘miss kiss’ between Charles and Diana at the polo – as their marriage crumbled.
- Just how long can Foreign Secretary David Lammy last having described Trump as ‘deluded’, ‘xenophobic’, and a ‘neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath’? On the other hand, Lammy’s probably safe. he was only expressing what most of the Labour Party think.
- A young Latino mum and business owner, when asked why she had switched her vote from the Democrats to the Republicans, said: ‘I don’t want to raise my daughter thinking her greatest ambition in life is to be able to legally get an abortion.’
Donald Trump kisses his wife Melania on victory night
- Meanwhile, jitters in the Sussexes’ £11million Californian mansion as – with the Trump victory – the investigation into Harry’s visa may be reopened. Trump has gone on record as saying he’d consider deporting the Prince who admitted taking drugs in his memoir Spare. Is Meghan regretting saying she’d rather leave America than live under a Trump presidency?
Great news that the Princess of Wales will attend the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall tonight and the Sunday service at the Cenotaph. Nothing will cheer a nation more in the slough of a Labour-inspired depression, than seeing Kate back on duty again.
Council’s barmy behaviour
A scheme to protect women and girls has added cat-calls and wolf-whistling to a list of prohibited behaviour in Labour-run Barking and Dagenham council, with a £1,000 fine for perpetrators. You’d have thought that in one of the poorest and most in debt London councils they had better things to do with their time.
In their latest round of self-flagellation, a Church of England report declares rural parishes are racist and priests need urgent ‘whiteness awareness training’. Jolly good but as the Reverend Ian Paul, a member of the General Synod commented, perhaps the reason congregations are mostly white is that we live in a white-majority country – and the only prejudice being shown in the report is by those who wrote it.
Strictly Come Dancing’s head judge Shirley Ballas recently split from her fiancé
After splitting from her fiancé Danny Taylor, 13 years her junior, Strictly judge Shirley Ballas, 64, says she’s not sure ‘why she hasn’t found her perfect match’. Perhaps Shirl, as any woman in her mid-sixties knows, it’s not about finding ‘Mr Right’ but Mr Right Now, an age-appropriate bloke with his own hair and teeth, and with a few bob left in the bank after his last wife took him to the cleaners.
Much excitement over the new Gladiator II movie starring Normal People’s Paul Mescal, yet pictures on set reveal his disappointingly measly torso. He doesn’t look like a Gladiator, more like the kind of guy who gets sand kicked in his face on the beach. Maybe he’ll use wimpy tactics like that to fight off lions in the Colosseum.
- Rachel Reeves argued that increasing employers’ NI contributions was taxing those with the broadest shoulders. Yet as Roger Daltrey, patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust which has raised millions for ill youngsters reveals, it is ‘a catastrophe’ for charities like his. They will have to sack staff, and no longer be able to pay specialist carers. How could any woman do such a thing to suffering children?
What about wait for hip ops!
Sixteen transgender patients who were born women are threatening to sue the NHS after delays of up to three months in treatment to transform their lady bits.
Lawyers say some have been left with ‘half-built’ penises.
My heart wilts, but not as much as for those waiting up to five months for a hip op on the NHS.
It’s enough to give you the willies.
