David Beckham

Why has your marriage been successful? Why are you still together?

I think because we're a strong family unit, you know, we've got strong parents, we were brought up with the right values. Of course, you make mistakes over the years and we all know marriage is difficult at times and it's about working through it. And whenever we've come up against tough times, you know, we know each other better than anybody knows us. So, you know, we talk, we have amazing children, we have an amazing life which we're very respectful of. But we are also, you know, private people as well. You know, people have talked about, you know, do we stay together because it's a brand? Of course not. You know, we stay together because we love each other. We stay together because we have four amazing children. And do you go through tough times? Of course you go through tough times. That's part of relationships. It's part of marriages. It's part of having children. It's part of having responsibilities. You know, back when we were 22, 23 years old, the only responsibility that we had was to ourselves and to our jobs at the time. And, you know, we're very respectful of our life. And when we do go through tough times, we work through them as a family, as a unit.

After the 1998 World Cup sending-off, you received death threats and there was an effigy – what helped you through that tough time?

Um, my family, Manchester United, Sir Alex Ferguson. The first person to call me after that game was Sir Alex Ferguson. He said, Son, get back to Manchester, you'll be fine. And that gave me strength to actually get through probably the toughest time that I've been through in my life, in my career, and I didn't realize how bad it was going to be and how bad it was going to get until I remember getting off the plane and I was getting a connecting flight after we landed with the team. And as I was walking through that terminal, there was a journalist and a camera crew following me and they was like, How do you feel? You've let your grandparents down, you've let your sisters down, you've let your nation down, you've let yourself down. And it was at a time where my wife had told me that we were expecting our first child, so it should have been a happy time, and it wasn't. … But it was more difficult for my grandparents. You know, they were being doorstepped by journalists. … The most difficult part for me, knowing that my parents were going through it, my sisters were going through it.

In the next twenty-two years, what would you like people to talk about David Beckham for doing?

I think more than anything that is one of the most important things in my life at the moment is my charity work. That for me is what gives me the most pleasure out of anything that I do. You know, the businesses that I have, of course they're very important to me. You know, the life that I have, obviously my family is my number one. But it's not just about the amount of money that we raise. It's meeting these children. It's knowing that we're changing children's lives. We're protecting children from HIV and AIDS. That for me gives me the most pleasure.