It was spring 2006, and I was standing in the Beckhams’ garden in Madrid, surrounded by footballers I didn’t recognize. “I think I just met three men called Ronaldo?” I texted my more football-savvy friend Jess. I attempted conversational French with a man whose name I didn’t know but whom two months later I would watch headbutting a rival in the World Cup: it was Zinedine Zidane. The one party guest I did recognize, Gordon Ramsay, approached me: “Why are you here?” he asked. Apparently, my efforts to look as though I fitted in hadn’t worked.
Why was I there? David Beckham had very sweetly invited me to his party because I was ghostwriting Victoria’s guide to fashion, That Extra Half an Inch, a title that was supposed to be simultaneously, for reasons I never entirely understood, a reference to high heels and a sexual innuendo. But the interviewing part of the job was done, and I should have been in my flat in London pounding out the book now. So why had I flown to Spain for a party attended mainly by footballers? The answer was I’d succumbed to ghostitis, that common illness of ghostwriters when you cross the line between observing your subject and liking them.
