It’s hard to imagine a woman being openly questioned about an eating disorder, or weighed publicly on live TV today.
However that is exactly what happened to Victoria Beckham in the late 90s and early 2000s during a series of chat show appearances.
Releasing her new Netflix documentary on Thursday, the fashion designer, 51, has revealed she has suffered from a lifelong eating disorder as she spoke for the very first time about controlling her weight in an ‘incredibly unhealthy way’ and how she hid the eating disorder from her family.
And now unearthed interviews have shown the star was publicly shamed for her weight when she was asked if she was anorexic by Michael Parkinson and made to stand on the scales by Chris Evans.
During a chat show appearance in 2000 with Michael Parkinson he outright Victoria if she was anorexic.
He pries: ‘As far as you’re concerned, this thing in the press about you being an anorexic, now are you anorexic?’
She immediately replies: ‘No I’m not!’ to which he hits back: ‘How do you know?’
Victoria responds: ‘I know that because I eat, anorexics don’t eat! I have a perfectly healthy diet. And what upset me the most when all of that was in the press was that I know I’m fine, my family know I’m fine…
Unearthed interviews have shown Victoria Beckham was publicly shamed for her weight when she was asked if she was anorexic by Michael Parkinson and made to stand on the scales by Chris Evans (pictured during her interview with Michael Parkinson in 2000)
Victoria was humiliatingly made to stand on scales and weighed in front of a studio audience on live TV just two months after giving birth to her first child
‘But there are lots of young children out there who look up to the Spice Girls and think goodness you know are you meant to be thin you know I mean I look at the way I look now and I used to be a lot bigger and I lost a lot of weight after having Brooklyn but this is just the way that I look now… but it did worry me…’
Parkinson then interrupts to say: ‘Did you go to a doctor? Did you think you might be anorexic?’
Victoria then says: ‘I did go as it worried me because I started to get paranoid, and I asked is there anything wrong with me. I wanted to be totally checked out as I was eating perfectly fine and they said it was what happens when you have children.
‘My mum lost three and a half stone after she had my brother so it’s hereditary. I eat and this is what I look like. I have breakfast, lunch and then I have dinner.’
She then recalled that is sometimes ’embarrassing’ that people monitor what she eats when she is in a restaurant as Parkinson asked her: ‘do people think you’re going to chuck up or whatever?’
She replies: ‘Yes the other day we were out and I was busting for the bathroom and it’s sad to think you can’t even do that now.’
Yet this wasn’t the only incredibly uncomfortable moment Victoria was subject to, after she was humiliatingly made to stand on scales and weighed in front of a studio audience – just two months after giving birth to her first child Brooklyn.
Dressed stylishly in black trousers and a strappy top, but looking painfully thin, Victoria was interviewed by Chris Evans on his popular Channel 4 show TFI Friday in 1999, as husband to be David looked on.
In an unearthed interview with Parkinson, he is seen asking her incredibly personal questions about it
Michael pries: ‘As far as you’re concerned, this thing in the press about you being an anorexic, now are you anorexic?’
The clips from both chat shows now has a more sinister connotation after Victoria admitted she has suffered an eating disorder since the earliest days of her pop career in her new Netflix documentary (pictured)
Chris warmly greeted Victoria by kissing her hand and cheeks – turning to Sir David, he joked: ‘It was just a quick peck, David, that’s all it was.’
He then asked Victoria: ‘A lot of girls want to know, because you look fantastic again, how did you get back to your shape after your birth?’
She replied: ‘I haven’t done anything, I mean I’m really lazy… I don’t go down to the gym or anything…’
Chris interjected: ‘Are you one of these sickening women that don’t have to do anything.’
Victoria said: ‘I don’t, I don’t… actually a lot of people say does David help you work out…’
Chris then asked: ‘Is your weight back to normal?’ and Victoria replied: ‘Yes, it is.’
Reaching under his desk for a set of scales, Chris then asked: ‘Can I check? Do you mind?
A laughing Victoria replied: ‘Oh no, you did this to Geri didn’t you! Geri was small.’
Helping her onto the scales, they read the dial as Chris said: ‘Eight stone, that’s not bad at all, is it?’ while the audience cheers in the background.
Victoria then asked Chris to weigh himself and he said: ‘I’m always 12 stone six,’ but the arrow indicates 12 stones, and he joked: ‘Oh, look I’ve lost six pounds during the show.’
Back in 2022 Victoria addressed the interview in Vogue Australia, she recalled: ‘I went on a TV show with Chris Evans many years ago and I’d just had Brooklyn, and lost a lot of weight after.
‘It happened to my mum after her pregnancies. It doesn’t mean you have an eating disorder. And he made me stand on the scales to be weighed. Can you imagine doing that nowadays?’
And now speaking on the three part series, Victoria confesses how she ‘didn’t like’ what she saw when she looked in the mirror so began to control her weight.
She also shared for the first time her torment at being body shamed.
She said: ‘I really started to doubt myself and not like myself and because I let it affect me, I didn’t know what I saw when I looked in the mirror.
She immediately replies: ‘No I’m not!’ to which he hits back: ‘How do you know?’ Victoria responds: ‘I know that because I eat’
Parkinson then interrupted to say: ‘Did you go to a doctor? Did you think you might be anorexic?’
A friend of the former Spice Girl told the Daily Mail that despite her attempts to hide her problems with food, it became an unspoken, open secret, in her inner circle (pictured in 2006)
‘Was I fat? Was I thin? I don’t know, you lose all sense of reality. I was just very critical of myself. I didn’t like what I saw. I have been everything from porky posh to skinny posh, I mean, it’s been a lot and that’s hard.
‘I had no control over what was being written about me or the pictures that were being taken and I suppose I wanted to control that. I could control it with the clothing, I could control my weight. I was controlling my weight in an incredibly unhealthy way.
‘When you have an eating disorder you become very good at lying. And I was never honest about it with my parents.
‘I never spoke about it publicly, it really affects you. When you’re told constantly you’re not good enough. And I suppose that’s been with me my whole life.’
She also addressed the toll the Chris Evans show took on her as a 25-year-old new mum.
‘I was weighed on national television,’ says Victoria. ‘”Get on those scales, have you lost the weight?” We laugh about it and we joke about it but I was really, really young and that hurts.’
Meanwhile in light of the documentary’s release a friend of the former Spice Girl told the Daily Mail that despite her attempts to hide her problems with food, it became an unspoken, open secret, in her inner circle.
The insider claimed that Victoria’s diet was always the same – a small portion of steamed food – and even at ‘extravagant dinners’ when staff would bring her her own, different, meal.
Praising her bravery, a source who worked closely with Victoria for years, and counted her as a friend said: ‘But yes of course, we all knew’.
‘At home she only ate steamed fish and vegetables with no salt or pepper or any sauce’, they added.
The insider said that this would not change when she attended glitzy bashes with or without David.
‘When she went to events she didn’t have what everyone else had, she just had steamed food that came out when everyone was having their extravagant dinners’.
Another friend has claimed that she has spoken out now because she wants to help other women ‘experiencing similar problems’.
Victoria’s body confidence agony began when she was just a teenager and won a place at the Laine Theatre school in Epsom, Surrey – which she reveals her parents funded by remortgaging their house in Goffs Oak, Hertfordshire.
She tells how despite her hard work she wasn’t the best dancer, or indeed singer. But she also told how she looked different to her classmates.
‘I didn’t look like a lot of the other girls,’ she says. ‘That’s where I started getting a lot of criticism about my appearance, my weight.
‘I remember the principal of the theatre school saying to me, “you girls can be flown in”, meaning that we weren’t looking as aesthetically pleasing as some of the others, “so we’ll just fly you in the back”.’
Victoria’s mother Jackie also adds that the star was told ‘you’re overweight. You’ll be at the back.’
She added: ‘It must have affected her, it’s a very silly thing to say to someone, “you’re fat”.’
Speaking on the three part series, Victoria confesses how she ‘didn’t like’ what she saw when she looked in the mirror so began to control her weight (pictured in 1997)
The documentary follows Victoria in the run up to her Paris Fashion Week show in September 2024 – the biggest catwalk occasion she had ever thrown.
Viewers will see how the weather left her and the team at her label on tenterhooks as they feared they would have to postpone it.
But it also takes viewers on the former singer’s journey from a Spice Girl, to a WAG, right through to the present day as a fashion designer.
It is nothing if not candid, and at times Victoria’s voice shakes as she holds back tears about some of the more difficult times in her life.
Amongst them was when her VB label was millions in the red and was on the verge of closure.
After launching it in 2008, she was repeatedly bailed out by husband David which made her a laughing stock.
For the first time Victoria tells of her upset at almost losing the London-based firm and the ’embarrassment’ it caused.
‘This business is everything to me, it’s absolutely who I am but it has been a hell of a journey. I almost lost everything and that was a dark, dark time,’ she says.
‘I used to cry before I went to work every day because I felt like a fire fighter. We were tens of millions in the red.
‘Yes, I’m going home to my husband but I’m going home to my business partner as well and so I would talk to him about it, I had to. He was invested, and I hated it. I absolutely hated it.
David, 51, who makes various appearances as a talking head in the show, then reveals: ‘We both sat there and looked at what I had invested and I think part of that conversation broke my heart because Victoria is a proud woman.
‘When we met, she was a lot richer than me, she actually bought our first house in Hertfordshire known as Beckingham Palace.
‘So for her to have to come to me and say ‘can I have some, we need some more money, the business needs more money,’ that was hard for both of us.
‘Because I didn’t have the money to keep doing this and eventually I was like “this cannot continue”.’
The documentary follows Victoria in the run up to her Paris Fashion Week show in September 2024 – the biggest catwalk occasion she had ever thrown
Victoria added: ‘The entire house was crashing down, I was losing my business. I needed outside investment. I needed someone to help me.
‘I was so desperate to save this business. I was breaking down myself. I felt embarrassed but it’s fact. It wasn’t an opinion, it was at anyone being unkind.
‘I was in a whole, I felt like I was in quicksand. I was desperate. Really, really desperate.’
Victoria later found David Belhassen whose company Neo Investments invested £30 million in Victoria Beckham in 2017.
The mother-of-four doesn’t address her feud with eldest son Brooklyn, 26, but he and his wife Nicola Peltz, 30, are seen in the background in footage filmed from the Parisian fashion show last year, and there are several poignant photographs and video clips of him as a baby and young boy.
Her other sons appear a couple of times, while there is a scene when daughter Harper, 14, teaches her mum to dance to Chic’s Le Freak at their US apartment for a TikTok video in what is one of the funnier moments.
