This is the moment Victoria Beckham was humiliatingly made to stand on scales and weighed in front of a studio audience on live TV just after giving birth to her first child.
The clip from 1999 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.
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.
Also, in the audience during the crass ‘weigh in’ – which came just two months after Brooklyn was born – was the late football managerial legend Terry Venables, a former boss at Tottenham Hotspur and England.
Evans 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.’
The interview was just before David and Victoria’s wedding and after Manchester United’s treble Champions League, Premier League and FA Cup success, which was followed, Victoria said, by ‘a massive party’.
Evans told the audience the ‘world’s most famous baby’ was asleep downstairs, adding: ‘We’ve had to turn the bands down all day.’
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?’
This is the moment Victoria Beckham was humiliatingly made to stand on scales and weighed in front of a studio audience on live TV just after giving birth to her first child
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.’
The clip from 1999 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)
Poignantly during the interview Victoria also describes how Sir David was an ideal dad with Brooklyn – who is now the subject of a rift with his parents.
Revealing they didn’t have a nanny Victoria said: ‘He’s great, he’s changing the nappies, he bathes him, he does everything.’
The interview ended with Victoria declining to do the splits with Chris and when he said: ‘David says he wants six kiddies, do you share that desire?’
She replied: ‘Well, I’d like a few more but I don’t know about six.’
Referring to the weigh-in on her new Netflix documentary, Victoria – who was just 25 then – said: ‘I was weighed on national television.
‘”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.’
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 told 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.
Victoria’s body confidence agony began when she was just a teenager and won a place at the Laine Theatre school in Epsom, Surrey
‘I didn’t look like a lot of the other girls,’ she said. ‘That’s where I started getting a lot of criticism about my appearance, my weight.
‘I remember the principle of the theatre school saying to me, you know, at the end of the show we are going to just fly in. “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 added 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”.’
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 told 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 said.
‘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.’
