From his latest interview, this one in The Sunday Times
"I knew there would be headlines made by the serialisation, but I hope people can go beyond them now and get the whole story by reading the book," he says. Now he hopes his public will buy it, read it, and be able to take a more informed view of the most famous relationship in British sport — the one between him and his former manager, Sir Alex Ferguson.
"I understand why people have jumped on what happened between me and the gaffer during my last season at United," he says, and certainly the growing friction between the two has dominated the headlines for most of the year. "It’s the obvious story, even though it’s not anything like the whole story. There was so much more to my relationship with Alex Ferguson."
Beckham had his first taste of Spanish football as a wide-eyed 11-year-old (although it’s not an experience he’ll be chatting about with too many Madrilenos: his prize for winning a skills competition at a Bobby Charlton soccer school was two weeks’ training with Real’s arch-rivals, Barcelona).
The football wasn’t the only thing that left its mark on an impressionable youngster: "I saw one or two things I never had growing up in Chingford: in the evenings there would be prostitutes walking up and down outside on the other side of the railings, and all the older Spanish boys would be leaning out of the windows whistling at them.
"We used to have this hot chocolate drink at night, which I liked so much I drank two one evening and made myself sick. I went to the toilet, turned the light on and saw a cockroach crawl across the floor. What was I doing here? The football was an experience. And so was the rest of it."