By: KENNETH MAXWELL

Folha de São Paulo - Op-ed section - page A2 

The new Wembley stadium hosted the Brazil-England friendly, a draw, not a bad outcome. David Beckham regained some lost luster with the British fans.

The off field buzz, however, was less about the game than it was about weather or not Beckham would receive a knighthood in retiring Prime minister Tony Blair's final "honors" list. The problem for Beckham it seems was his wife, Victoria. The question posed by the press pundits was this: Can a former "spice girl" become a "Lady" The other drama of the week was a television special called "Queen Camilla" This was yet one more attempt by the friends around Prince Charles to make the unpalatable former Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles, now the duchess of Cornwall, palatable to a British public still nostalgic for the glamorous days of princess Diana.

The argument was that Prince Charles was so antipathetic, temperamental, snotty, irritable, awkward, and just plain weird to be a successful King; but that now, with Camilla, his long time mistress and true love, by his side as wife, she would keep him in order, be in effect "his mother" as the program put it, so that Charles with her assistance might just succeed as a monarch after all.

When this happens, the television program argued, the British people would come to see this success as being entirely due to the support of the long suffering, silent, and non glamorous Camilla. And a beloved Queen Camilla would emerge. And Camilla would thereby displace forever in the public mind the lingering memory of the "people's princess".

It is, of course, the Cinderella story in reverse. Now it is the ugly sister returning in triumph to claim the charming prince who was not so charming. But in the convoluted world of British public moralism why then all the fuss about the Beckhams' suitability for the knightly title, that may or may not, come their way in Tony Blair's last honors list? With adultury triumphant at the top so to speak, that is wife dead, mistress wins; what is so wrong about the spice girls provenance? If there is to be a Queen Camilla why not a Lady Victoria Beckham?

It was all so much simpler in the days of the old Wembly Stadium when Brazil played England. Then everyone knew Pele was the King.

KENNETH MAXWELL is a weekly op-ed columnist (every Thursday) for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's leading newspaper.