Victoria Beckham, whose maiden name was Adams, poses with 14-year-old daughter HarperCredit: InstagramDad Tony Adams with wife Jackie and the BeckhamsCredit: Instagram
Fashion designer Victoria, 52, was also joined by her younger sons Romeo, 23, and Cruz, 21, and her mum Jackie.
The lavish celebration at the weekend was at Hotel Café Royal in Central London.
Victoria, who wore a white dress at the party, said as her father turned 80 yesterday: “Happy birthday, Daddy, we love you so so much!
“Thank you to all our friends and family who helped to make it so special! Such an amazing night celebrating my wonderful dad.”
The lavish celebration at the weekend was at Hotel Café Royal in Central LondonCredit: InstagramBrooklyn Beckham wished his grandad a happy birthday on Instagram – but was absent from the partyCredit: Instagram
The mum-of-four was known as Victoria Adams before marrying England footie star David in 1999.
Brooklyn made a rare mention of his family by posting a photo on social media, right, of him and Tony and saying: “Happy 80th papa x I love you so much.”
Brooklyn is said to still be close to his grandparents despite not seeing them for months amid his feud with his parents and brothers. He has remained in the US with his wife Nicola Peltz, 31.
Sir David, 51, gave Tony a leg of Monte Nevado ham as a gift and called him “the best father-in-law I could ask for”.
There was a more down-to-earth birthday celebration yesterday — a visit to a pie and mash shop in Waltham Abbey, Essex, where Tony was presented with some school cake.
DAVID Beckham has posed in a pair of tiny speedos as his wife Victoria gushes over him in a sweet tribute to mark his 51st birthday.
The former professionalfootballer is celebrating his birthday today, and his wife Victoria has shared several sweet posts – including unseen photos and private family snaps.
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Victoria Beckham shared a gushing tribute to her husbandCredit: InstagramHe is celebrating his 51st birthday today (May 2)Credit: Instagram
One of the posts Victoria shared saw David posing on a boat in only a pair of tiny red shorts.
Showing off his incredible physique, David’s six pack and muscles were on full display.
Victoria accompanied the slew of snaps with a gushing tribute to her husband.
In the caption, the fashion designer penned: “You are our world, our everything. We love you so much!!!
Victoria shared some sweet snaps from a sun-soaked breakCredit: InstagramThe couple posed on a yacht in some of the snapsCredit: Instagram
“Happy birthday to the best husband, daddy, son, brother, and friend.
“To the kindest most generous soul. We will spoil you all day!!!!
“Nobody deserves it more than you xxx.”
Commenting on the post, one person penned: “Happy birthday!! Please stay together forever.”
A second person swooned: “He ages like a fine wine.”
“We all love your husband as much as you do,” added a third.
Romeo Beckham wished his dad a happy birthday on InstagramCredit: InstagramRomeo branded his dad his ‘best mate’Credit: InstagramCruz Beckham shared a sweet tribute to his father to mark his 51stCredit: instagramJackie Apostel also shared a sweet tribute to her boyfriend’s fatherCredit: InstagramJackie praised David for being a role model to CruzCredit: Instagram
While a fourth said: “Happy Birthday David!! He just gets better and better.”
And a fifth wrote: “Happy birthday Sir David .. and Lady Victoria that was beautifully written. Have a fabulous day.”
She also shared a selection of images from a night out where David blew candles out on top of a birthday cake.
David was seen posing with his mum and dad, as well as other family members.
Victoria then shared some sweet photos of her and her hubby posing on a yacht.
David’s doting wife is not the only person to wish him a happy birthday on his big day.
Romeo Beckham took to Instagram to share several sweet posts in honour of his dad where he dubbed him as his “best mate”.
Cruz also shared two snaps of him and his dad, wishing him a happy day.
His girlfriend Jackie Apostel has thanked David for being a role model to her boyfriend in a sweet post.
And as the family feud rumbles on after Brooklyn launched a nuclear attack on his family earlier this year, he is of course yet to wish his father a happy birthday publicly.
After my father’s will banned me and my siblings from his funeral, I wrote a novel about some brothers and sisters stealing their dad in his coffin. The emotions were drawn from my painful experiences, but I invented the characters and the tragi-comic narrative in Stealing Dad. Despite growing up in England, I’ve lived in and written about Athens for 25 years, and it came naturally to create several Greek characters. Alekos is a wild sculptor who dies in London, and his daughter Iris (one of seven dispersed half-siblings) lives off Victoria Square – one of Athens’ most fascinating corners.
In the 1960s, Plateia Viktorias was a fashionable neighbourhood with the fanciest restaurants, shops and theatres. Townhouses from the interwar period were being demolished and Athenians were occupying the new six-storey apartment blocks so fast that construction dust and the constant drilling were the main problem. Today, through wrought-iron and glass doors, elegant, marble-lined halls reveal concierges’ desks and traces of a vanished bourgeois life.
After the 1980s, middle-class families started leaving the polluted centre for the suburbs; students, migrants and others seeking cheap rentals moved in. The 2008 global economic crisis was disastrous. Older businesses faded, drug use became increasingly visible, then around 2014, refugees started arriving. Afghans and Syrians fleeing war already knew about Victoria Square and went straight there on reaching Athens. It became an encampment, with sleeping bags and tents surrounding the imposing bronze sculpture Theseus Saving Hippodamia. Desperate, traumatised people lived on the street with no facilities, queueing at soup kitchens already catering for elderly and unemployed Greeks devastated by the crash.
Brought up in Victoria Square during its heyday, Maria-Liza Karageorgi runs the alluring Café des Poètes. Photographs of Greece’s poets, including CP Cavafy and Nobel laureates Giorgos Seferis and Odysseas Elytis, line the walls. Karageorgi allowed the refugees to wash and use the toilets, then, as numbers grew, she admitted only women and children. Today, though, a balance has been established in the leafy square. “It’s a real neighbourhood,” she says. “People look out for each other.” Her devoted clientele of ageing Greek intelligentsia clearly agree, and gather every morning. “It’s like Buena Vista Social Club,” quipped a younger customer.
Photographs of Greek poets line the walls of Cafe des Poètes. Photograph: Sofka Zinovieff
Now the most multicultural area in Athens, Victoria Square honours the 19th-century British queen, recognising her empire’s return to Greece of the Ionian islands, including Corfu, in 1864. British foreign policy also lurks in the histories of some newer arrivals. Victoria, the Afghan-Persian restaurant, bakes delicious roasted vegetable briam; Lebanese-born George at Enjoy Just Felafel produces jars of homemade delicacies and preserves; and Bangladeshi grocers stock the African staples sought by Nigerian, Somali and Congolese residents. The area is scented by the Georgian bakery with its flatbreads cooked in a stone oven.
Refugees and migrants are supported by various NGOs that sprang up after 2014. Nadina Christopoulou runs the Melissa Network, a flourishing organisation for women and children housed in an elegant 1920s villa. “Refugees follow the paths of the older refugees,” says Christopoulou. “This area had many Greeks from the diaspora, who came from Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey. You can see their shops, like Petek [honeycomb in Turkish], the patisserie owned since 1964 by the same Istanbul Greeks.” They are still making their delectable galaktoboureko custard pie. Also on 3 Septemvriou is Arkeuthos, another Istanbul-Greek shop overflowing with herbs, spices, teas and honeys.
Older Greek establishments are also flourishing. Krouskas, a traditional, no frills restaurant favoured by locals since the 1970s, still serves the same recipes cooked by the family matriarch. On pedestrianised Elpidos (Hope St), Ouzeri tou Laki (Laki’s Ouzo Taverna) has served excellent seafood since the 80s at tables under bitter orange trees that are intoxicatingly scented in spring. The gay-friendly Diva Café, owned by former dancer and singer Michalis Razis, holds live events and standup comedy.
Cine Trianon, Athens’s historic arthouse cinema. Photograph: Amalia Kovaiou
Victoria’s longstanding theatrical traditions are thriving. On Kodrigktonos (Codrington Street, named after a British admiral) is the renowned Trianon cinema. The Greek romantic comedy Never on Sunday premiered there in 1960 with Melina Mercouri in attendance, and on summer nights the roof opens. Next door, cafe-bar Foyer D’Athènes is packed with theatre and cinema memorabilia.
Newer attractions include Montreal, a gallery-hairdresser where you can admire the art before the charming artist Lambros Vouvousiras cuts your hair. Opposite, Café Apoteka is popular with a young crowd who gather in the nearby Kypseli – well established as a more hipster multicultural neighbourhood. There, Airbnb is already pricing out locals, following the example of the Acropolis-adjacent neighbourhoods, now overwhelmed by tourists.
When my friend, the journalist Katerina Bakogianni, relocated six years ago to a fifth-floor flat in Victoria Square, her suburban friends thought it daring. However, she wakes to the sunrise over Mount Hymettus, a bird’s-eye view of mulberry trees, and she’s one minute from the 1940s Victoria station on Metro Line 1, with its gorgeous sage-green tiles.
Katerina takes me and her dog Robbie for a stroll. We cross Patission, the bustling boulevard once compared to Paris’s Champs-Élysées and with a breathtaking vista to the Acropolis. The revamped park Pedion tou Areos (Mars Fields) has transformed from the days when Athenians feared to cross it, especially after dark. It is now one of Athens’ loveliest green spaces and we stroll past heroic marble sculptures and admire athletes training and pampered dogs sporting bandanas. We end up at Green Park, a stylish restaurant-cafe in an art deco 1930s building.
“When Green Park reopened a few years ago, after years of decline,” says Katerina, “we read it as a small but telling sign that Victoria – long dismissed – was beginning to reclaim its dignity.”
It is not a cheap place but there are weekend musical shows, and on Sundays the garden fills with families ordering ice-creams and club sandwiches. Green Park offers a taste of the “golden days” about which Victoria’s older residents reminisce. And it’s not alone: various theatres, cinemas and live music joints have been resurrected after nearly not making it. After everything else, Covid hit hard.
Petek, a patisserie owned since 1964 by the same Istanbul Greeks. Photograph: Sofka Zinovieff
The streets below the square have a rougher reputation. Graffiti reflects local preoccupations: “Cops for Dinner”; “Refugees Welcome”; “Support your local sex worker”. Fylis street is lined with white door lights identifying its notorious brothels. Customers come and go, day and night. Squats open and close, some organised by community-minded activists, others by homeless migrants. “Do you live here?” asked an appalled taxi driver dropping me off. “But you look like a nice lady.” Fylis has seedy elements, but locals dispute the idea that you’re not safe; just behave as in any inner city.
On Wednesdays, the fabulous farmers’ market on Fylis provides excellent seasonal fruit, vegetables, fish and flowers, along with household goods and clothes, including giant, no-shame underpants. Musicians serenade shoppers with bouzouki songs, mobile canteens roast souvlaki and the air resounds with a Babel’s Tower of languages.
The area becomes less well off as you go westwards downhill, eventually hitting the railway tracks. Tasos Chalkiopoulos creates excellent short videos (@Athensville) of these changing Athenian neighbourhoods: the convenience stores on Acharnon where Bangladeshi and Pakistani owners sell goods to new arrivals, from mobile phones and blankets to Asian shampoo. Or farther north, where Syrian patisseries vie with Iraqi kebab shops, shisha cafes and fancy barbers. Athenians love their souvlaki as street food, but now also debate who makes the finest falafel. Despite steep competition, Tasos votes for the tiny Tarbosch on Acharnon.
I loved writing about Victoria Square in Stealing Dad. Like so much of Athens, one needs to gaze up, peer inside and glance back to understand the intricate tangle of its history. Look closely, and you appreciate the beauty, sympathise with the chaos and relish the energy.
Stealing Dad by Sofka Zinovieff (Little, Brown, £10.99). To order a copy for £9.89 go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
VICTORIA Beckham has lost a row with US luxury handbag brand Vera Bradley over using the initials VB.
The fashion designer’s Victoria Beckham Ltd team hired intellectual property lawyers in a bid to stop the company registering the letters.
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Vicotria Beckham has lost a row with US luxury handbag brand Vera BradleyCredit: GettyVictoria’s legal team argued that she was now known globally for her initials — the basis of her beauty firm logo, pictured Posh’s logoCredit: vb
They argued that Posh Spice Victoria was now known globally for her initials — the basis of her beauty firm logo.
But they have now backed down and the application, first published in the Trademark Journal in the US last year, has been registered.
Victoria Beckham Ltd — represented by top LA attorney Eleanor Lackman from law firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp — asked for more time to put together their case before finally dropping it.
The US Patent and Trademark Office said: “The Board notes the request, filed by Potential Opposer, Victoria Beckham Limited, to relinquish its extension of time to file a notice of opposition.
“In view thereof, the relinquishment releases the record of application for further processing.”
And in 2020, the former Spice Girl settled with Australian-based VB Skinland after they successfully registered the trademarks VB Salon and VB Skinlab.
Nic kick a Vic shtick
Nicola Peltz poked fun at her mother-in-law’s trademark poseCredit: Instagram‘This is Victoria Beckham’s signature move — stop trolling your mother-in-law’, blasted a fanCredit: Victoria Beckham / instagram
ACTRESS Nicola Peltz gets her kicks by poking fun at her mother-in-law’s trademark pose.
Brooklyn Beckham’s wife, 31, plays a ballerina in upcoming film Prima — and posted a picture online showing her leg pointed high in the air.
But one comment said: “This is Victoria Beckham’s signature move — stop trolling your mother-in-law.”
Nicola and Brooklyn, 27, are embroiled in a feud with his parents Victoria and David.
Dylan Sprouse sprang to action early Friday morning when he encountered a trespasser at his Hollywood Hills home.
Sources familiar with the incident told The Times that “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody” star tackled a man on the lawn near his home after his wife, Victoria’s Secret model Barbara Palvin, spotted “the creepy guy.” Palvin made an emergency call to police around 12:30 a.m. and reported a possible burglary.
TMZ, citing unnamed sources, reported that Sprouse had a gun and held the trespasser down until police arrived.
Police told The Times that the suspect was taken in on outstanding warrants and that no injuries were reported. Additionally, the suspect did not make it inside the couple’s 1920s Spanish-style home, only onto the property.
TMZ obtained footage of the arrest, which showed a suspect, whose face was blurred out, being handcuffed outside a police vehicle. A skateboard was leaned against the fence of the Disney alum’s property, and a “Private Property, No Trespassing” sign was posted on the gate.
Representatives for Sprouse and Palvin have not responded to The Times’ request for comment.
The couple met at a party in 2017 and by the fall of 2018, Palvin was gushing to Vogue that she was “very much in love.”
“I feel like I found the perfect guy,” she said of Sprouse. “He’s very kind and gentle.”
The couple tied the knot in the summer of 2023. In 2024, Palvin walked in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and during a backstage interview said that Sprouse always has something up his sleeve to surprise her.
Outside the show, Sprouse revealed on the pink carpet that he had signs made with the faces of the couple’s fur babies, a French bulldog named Piggy Cow and a cat named Klaus Von Sprouse, to hold up while Palvin strutted the catwalk.
VICTORIA Beckham has kicked off her early birthday celebrations with a lavish “girls” dinner in Miami after finally breaking her silence on her bitter feud with Brooklyn.
After her eldest son launched a scathing attack on the family with a bombshell Instagram statement back in January, the singer recently addressed the fallout for the first time.
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Leggy Victoria Beckham celebrates her birthday with friends and her daughter HarperCredit: InstagramHarper surprised her mum with a huge cake at her birthday mealCredit: InstagramBrooklyn Beckham launched a scathing attack on his family back in January as he posted a 6 part statement to InstagramCredit: Splash
Since speaking out on the “rift” between her family the fashion designer has been spotted letting loose at her early birthday celebrations.
Stunning Victoria took to her Instagram to show fans the incredible navy blue dress she decided to wear to the dinner.
Posing in the mirror of a huge dressing room, Victoria explained her dress of choice.
She said: “So I’m here in Miami and tonight I’m going out with my girlfriends for my birthday and I’ve got this amazing navy blue jersey dress which I love.
“I love the waist detail here, which really brings the waist in making it look super super toned. It’s got a slit up the side as well… It is the perfect party dress for a night out with my girlfriends.”
The Spice Girls star had her hair styled in natural waves and her makeup was flawless, complete with a very subtle smoky eye.
She accessorised the chic outfit with some blue open toed stilettos, chunky diamond bracelets and an emerald ring.
Victoria and her closet gal pals sat down for a very bougie meal at Italian restaurant Casadonna.
For starters they had focaccia bread, followed by a choice of grilled octopus or a baby gem lettuce caesar salad.
The singer showed fans her incredible outfit as she posed in a mirrorCredit: InstagramVictoria gave fans a sneak peak at her birthday meal menuCredit: Instagram
And for their third and final course the girls had the option to pick between filet mignon, branzino or beef ragu bolognase.
Victoria’s daughter Harper, 14, was also present at the girls dinner as she was seen giving her mum a big hug.
The singer-turned-fashion-designer captioned the snap: “I love you so much @harperbeckham.”
Victoria appeared over the moon as Harper surprised her with a huge birthday cake, which was complete with regal white icing and a singular gold candle.
Earlier this week Victoria broke her silence on her long-running feud with her son, amateur chef Brooklyn, 26.
Speaking toThe Wall Street Journalmagazine, Victoria did not refer to Brooklyn by name when asked about the rift but discussed how she had only ever tried to “protect and love our children”.
The Spice Girls star said: “I think that we’ve always—we love our children so much.
“We’ve always tried to be the best parents that we can be. And you know, we’ve been in the public eye for more than 30 years right now, and all we’ve ever tried to do is protect our children and love our children.
“And you know, that’s all I really want to say about it.”
Victoria Beckham and her family have been putting on a brave face amid the Brooklyn feudCredit: Instagram
Victoria Beckham is speaking out about her rift with son Brooklyn Peltz Beckham.
In an interview with WSJ Magazine, the former Spice Girl shared insight into her relationship with her son, although she did not refer to him by name.
“I think that we’ve always — we love our children so much,” Beckham said. “We’ve always tried to be the best parents that we can be. And you know, we’ve been in the public eye for more than 30 years right now, and all we’ve ever tried to do is protect our children and love our children. And you know, that’s all I really want to say about it.”
The response comes after Peltz Beckham took to his Instagram Story in January to accuse his parents of “endlessly trying to run” his relationship with his wife, Nicola Peltz Beckham. The 27-year-old claimed his parents “repeatedly pressured and attempted to bribe” him into signing away the rights to his name, that his mother “hijacked” the first dance during his wedding and that his family “values public promotion and endorsements above all else.”
“My wife has been consistently disrespected by my family, no matter how hard we’ve tried to come together as one,” Peltz Beckham wrote. “Family ‘love’ is decided by how much you post on social media, or how quickly you drop everything to show up and pose for a family photo opp, even if it’s at the expense of our professional obligations.”
Peltz Beckham ended the post writing, “I do not want to reconcile with my family. I’m not being controlled, I’m standing up for myself for the first time in my life.”
After the Instagram bombshell, fans believe David Beckham broke his silence while speaking about the power of social media during an interview in January on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“They make mistakes, but children are allowed to make mistakes. That is how they learn. That is what I try to teach my kids,” David Beckham said. “You sometimes have to let them make those mistakes as well.”
During Peltz Beckham’s birthday in March, his parents wished him happy birthday and shared that they love him on their Instagram Stories.
