David Beckham’s emails.

A PR disaster for Brand Beckham as leaked emails exposed him as greedy and unpleasant in his ruthless quest for a knighthood. This made me recall why I loathed New Labour only a year after voting for them: In 1966 Geoff Hurst scored a hat-trick for England in the World Cup Final. Hurst was never a world-class player like Best, Charlton or Greaves, but on that wonderful afternoon, he had the game of his life. He retired from playing in 1976, worked in insurance and had little more to do with football. And yet, in 1998, he was knighted. You can just imagine Tony Blair saying to Peter Mandelson, “We need to connect with common people. Who was that chap who scored that hat-trick? Give him a knighthood”. So Beckham probably considered himself more deserving than Geoff Hurst. Though here’s another knight, more deserving than either of them, who also did his best work in 1966.