THE BANDWAGON ROLLS ON

Easyjet's adverts featured a picture of the England captain and the "cornrow" plaits hairstyle he sported for the national team's recent match. The tagline stated "Hair today. Gone Tomorrow."

But the footballer's management company, SFX, has written to the airline complaining about the use of the picture without its permission.

A spokesman for Easyjet confirmed SFX had written to the airline asking it to consider a charitable donation to the NSPCC. Toby Nichol, Easyjet's head of Corporate Affairs, said:

"They wrote us a very polite, friendly letter asking us to consider a donation. The ad is a play on the rumours about David's move to Madrid and is a bit of light-hearted fun, like the other ads we have run." He added there was "absolutely no threat of legal action".

Elsewhere Posh is said to have had a boob job this time to reduce them.

And in the Indie:

The other day we were talking, some veterans of this trade, about sport as we once knew it.

We were talking mainly about the modern media obsession with celebrity and its effect on how people perceive sport. Inevitably, you may think, this involved David Beckham, whose narcissistic instincts ensure that he never misses a photo opportunity, doubtless to the despair of Sir Alex Ferguson.

The story which threw our little group back on memories of a time that was vastly different concerned the injury Beckham picked up when turning out last week for England against South Africa in Durban.

I cannot imagine there is a football follower who now does not know the precise location of the scaphoid bone and how long it normally takes to heal, all because of the disproportionate attention Beckham receives.

From personal experience, I can confirm that a busted scaphoid is at worst an inconvenience. And yet last week Sky made it seem as though nothing else in the match mattered, concentrating more on Beckham's minor injury than the football.

News is news, but this was a ludicrous turn of events that had some of us deploring the excesses of contemporary sports coverage.

Beckham's iconic status does not provide irrefutable proof of prowess. He may be the most coveted shirt swap, but true stature eludes him: terrific right foot, excellent vision, but no pace, no tricks.

Sven Goran Eriksson's statement, "Nobody plays football like David Beckham," sounds daft unless you allow for blips in translation. What the England coach probably meant was that no player knows how to employ his strengths better.

Certainly, no player is better at selling himself. Boosted by image rights, the strategy planned by his wife Victoria's publicity machine, Beckham's earning power in football is second to none.

That he has achieved this while falling short of the highest individual standards tells us about the time in which we live, the pervading editorial belief that celebrity sells.

When Jack Hutchinson was sports editor of the Daily Mirror, he told me: "Always go to an a event, a game or a fight, with an open mind. Never mentally write your intro before the game." He said that in 1958, and it still applies.

Unfortunately, this has become the exception rather than the rule. After Michael Owen's exploits in the 1998 World Cup finals, he could almost count on being named man of the match just for warming up before Liverpool's games. If Wayne Rooney plays, he is a headline. If it's England, it must be Beckham.

John Charles finds it baffling. Recalling his glory days with Juventus, one of the clubs said to be interested in Beckham, he said: "We just got on with it, trained and played. I'm not saying that people weren't interested in our private lives, but the sensible thing was to keep a low profile. From what I read about him, and the pictures I see, I don't think Beckham would find that easy."

As husband and father, Beckham is beyond reproach. No scandal is attached to him. But those of us who rage against the tide of the times cannot fail to find his ceaseless quest for personal publicity, with the assistance of fawning news outlets, irritating.