AMANDA PLATELL: The actually cynical motive I imagine REALLY lies behind the Beckhams’ gushing Brooklyn tributes

To mark their son Brooklyn’s 27th birthday, David and Victoria Beckham separately posted intimate pictures of themselves with their first-born when he was very young.

A loving gesture, you might think. Except he had expressly asked them not to.

In a painful public plea in January, Brooklyn, now estranged from them, asked them not to mention him or his wife Nicola Peltz on social media.

Which leaves you wondering what bit of Brooklyn’s edict did they not understand. And asking who this very public display of affection was actually for?

One post was of David and Vic in a swimming pool with baby Brooklyn and the caption ’27 today – Happy Birthday Bust [his childhood nickname]’ – We love you x’. Another was mum Victoria holding her boy, still in nappies, with the message: ‘Happy 27th birthday Brooklyn, I love you so much,’ accompanied by six hearts. 

Which would been six arrows through the heart of Brooklyn, given his request. 

On one hand you can argue it was two desperate parents reaching out to their son. On the other it’s a cynical bid to keep the story of the family split alive, to dominate headlines and boost their social media following and income. David is one of the UK’s highest-paid influencers, earning often over £200,000 for a single sponsored post.

In social media parlance these are called ‘performative posts’ – curated content designed to seize the moral high ground, perhaps by presenting themselves as the victims, as I fear the Beckhams both unashamedly did this week.

So shame on you David and Victoria. Please just do what Brooklyn has repeatedly asked – and leave him and Nicola alone.

Still mad for Madge

What’s not to admire about Madonna, who’s still at it aged 67. Ahead of her new album, ­Confessions Part 2, she’s been at a secret London location filming her raunchiest music video ever. And, as she proved in a recent Dolce & Gabbana shoot, she still looks sensational.

Although, as a woman of the same age, is it unsisterly to say that if any of us had a 200-strong team to make us appear fabulous, we could also look, if not like a virgin, less like a vintage bag?

Jessie in a cat flap

Jessie Buckley, a popular Oscar nomination for best actress as the star of Hamnet, faces a backlash after it’s revealed she hates cats so much she made it a condition of living with her husband that he got rid of his two beloved felines.

She said one of the cats was a kitten she called ‘b**ch’ who she claimed pooped on her pillow.

Well, she’s lost my moggie Ted’s vote and mine and millions of cat lovers’. For the record, I’ve shared my life with cats – not one has ever pooped on my pillow.

Lewis gives car crash interview

What a ninny Lewis Hamilton is to say, ahead of the return of the Formula 1 season, that it’s ‘time to take Africa back from the British’.

First, the British Empire withdrew from Africa decades ago. Second, if he hates the British so much after living mostly in tax exile for the last decade, why hasn’t he returned the knighthood given to him by King Charles?

After Wayne Rooney was snapped worse for wear with two young woman at a Brits awards bash in the wee small hours, his long-suffering wife Coleen took off her wedding ring.

Happily, it was back on when she launched her low budget Primark fashion range, saying her favourite piece was a £26 jacket – even though earlier in the week she’d worn a Stella McCartney puffa jacket which sells for up to £1,450.

No tears shed for Ian Huntley who murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002 and is brain damaged, blind and fighting for his life after being attacked with a metal pole in prison. He’s had 24 more years of life than those poor little girls and even his mother Lynda Richards says ‘it’s better if he doesn’t pull through’. She’s right – not least because his death would save the taxpayer hundreds of thousands spent keeping the merciless child killer in prison every year.

Ahead of his new TV show, Jonathan Ross said he didn’t want to become a national treasure. No fear of that after ‘Sachsgate’, when he and bestie Russell Brand performed a cruel and crude prank on Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs and his granddaughter. Truth is, Wossy’s not so much a national treasure now as a sunken one.

If the Prince and Princess of Wales are distancing themselves from Beatrice and Eugenie, as has been reported, why not remove their HRH titles too? It would reflect the mood of the nation about these cling-ons who have had their homes funded by the monarchy – shorthand for funded by us.

Simon Cowell’s new boy band, December 10, turned up at the BRIT Awards to see what it’s like to be famous. Good luck, lads. Your first single tanked and Louis Walsh – who created Boyzone and Westlife – said cattily: ‘December 10? They should have called themselves April First.’

Westminster Wars 

Having destabilised the UK’s special relationship with America, prompting Trump to dismiss him as ‘no Churchill’, Starmer still defends his actions. Not since Neville Chamberlain who appeased Nazi Germany have we had such a pathetic wartime leader.

Meanwhile as the bombs exploded, our tanned Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, fresh from another freebie sunshine jaunt, thought it would be a good idea for MPs to be filmed having a stress-busting ballroom dance session. Hoyle lost control of the house in a febrile PMQs this week, but has he also lost his marbles?

Sweet Caroline’s blue murder

A sweet gesture that Kate Hudson is taking her mum Goldie Hawn to the Oscars, having been nominated for Best Actress in Song Sung Blue with Hugh Jackman. They play a couple in a cheesy Neil Diamond tribute act.

Spoiler alert, neither of them can sing and if I hear Sweet Caroline – boom, boom, boom – one more time, I’ll want to kill someone.

Not so much shaken as unstirred by the fact that David Taylor, husband of Labour MP Joani Reid, is arrested over allegations of spying for China, which he denies. He looks like a GCSE student who’d struggle to order a Peking Duck pancake, when we were expecting Daniel Craig!

A terrible time for British holidaymakers trying to escape from Dubai and other parts of the Middle East as missiles flew overhead and the government couldn’t arrange flights out until days after other countries. One small thought though. Yes, we must fund the return of the tourists, but shouldn’t those tax exiles who live there pay their own passage to Britain?

After all of the HMRC payments they’ve avoided, surely they can afford it.