No one else can brand it like Beckham
The Times
“Fame is quite toxic, particularly when you’re living your entire life in the glare of publicity. Your kids don’t have the same normal life as the person next door. And it’s very, very difficult,” says Mark Borkowski, a veteran publicist and strategist. “So you see clearly the pain of that in a family. But that isn’t the business.”
His status as a gay icon, who had posed on the cover of Attitude magazine, was severely undermined when it was revealed he had signed a long-term deal to promote the World Cup in Qatar. But in retrospect, Borkowski says, the negative publicity “just supercharged him. In his case the old adage ‘all publicity is good publicity’ is true.”