Oedipus Becks: fans online rally round in ‘national emergency’

Over the past week Stephen Thomas, 49, an insurance company employee from Cardiff, has been moonlighting as a reputation manager for Victoria Beckham, whom he has never met.

Thomas has been campaigning on TikTok for people to listen to the former Spice Girl’s single, following her son Brooklyn Peltz Beckham’s posts, criticising his parents for being “controlling” and his mother for ruining his wedding dance. All the hard work has paid off and Victoria Beckham’s single, Not Such an Innocent Girl, originally released in 2001, has reached number one in the iTunes chart.

Thomas said: “Victoria and David are like the royal family to me. I’d do anything for her.”

In a social media landscape where #teambrooklyn is facing #teambeckham in a scandal dubbed “Oedipus Becks”, it’s a win of sorts for the fashion mogul and may help diminish her reported embarrassment over her eldest son’s accusations.

The viral campaign has had its tongue in its proverbial cheek. “Stream Posh. It’s a national emergency,” posted Andrew and Thom, under the Instagram handle @our_first_dream_home. “Nothing says ‘British culture’ like collectively deciding to send Posh to the top of the charts because her son roasted her on Insta.” Cruz Beckham, Brooklyn’s youngest brother, added his support, posting an Instagram story accompanied by his mother’s song.

The track has now beaten Harry Styles’ new release, Aperture, to the number one spot, despite it being the former One Direction singer’s first single in four years.

Speaking on the television show This Morning last week, Fat Tony, real name Tony Marnoch, who was a DJ at the Peltz-Beckham wedding in 2022, described the events that Brooklyn Beckham has claimed left him “devastated”. During the reception, the singer Marc Anthony invited Brooklyn to join him on the stage. The new groom has said he was expecting a romantic first dance with his new wife. Instead, according to Marnoch, Anthony asked for “the most beautiful woman in the room” – Victoria – to join her son on stage. “Brooklyn is suddenly, literally devastated because he thought he was going to do his first dance with his wife,” said Marnoch.

Nicola Peltz Beckham, he added, left the room “crying her eyes out”. Anthony then encouraged Brooklyn to put his hands on his mother’s hips, a gesture Marnoch described as “a Latin thing”, but one that made the atmosphere uncomfortable.

“They’re a very dancey, close-knit family,” he said, stressing that this wasn’t about scandalous moves, but timing. “This is all about how Brooklyn feels. If he felt it was inappropriate and awkward, it was.”

Since Brooklyn spoke out, videos in support of Victoria Beckham’s dancing, both real and AI-generated, have circulated on social media. Gemma Collins, a former star of The Only Way Is Essex, captioned one such video with, “We love you.” Also on team Beckham is the comedian Katherine Ryan, who weighed in online to call Brooklyn an “ungrateful nepo baby”. More predictably, the swimmer Adam Peaty’s parents, Caroline and Mark, who are estranged from their son since his wedding to Holly Ramsay, have said it doesn’t tally with “what we know of the Beckhams”.

The Peltz Beckhams have their own tribe. Singer Lily Allen shared a photo of her 2025 album West End Girl, with Brooklyn’s face replacing hers. Allen’s album unveiled her dysfunctional relationship with former husband David Harbour.

Rebecca Loos, David Beckham’s former PA, who claims to have had an affair with the footballer, posted: “I have felt so bad for his poor wife [Nicola Peltz Beckham], knowing too well what they can be like!”

Meanwhile, the Peltz Beckhams were photographed last week holding hands in Malibu. In his posts, Brooklyn said the couple were particularly upset by his mother’s refusal to back Nicola’s campaign to help dogs displaced during the LA fires.

Victoria Beckham’s company is looking for a new social media executive who is “calm under pressure”. Presumably no dance experience is required.

Photograph by Dave Hogan/Mission Pictures/Getty Images