EVEN before he kicks his first ball against visiting Chelsea in Los Angeles next Saturday, David Beckham and his wife Victoria are fast learning the rules of the Hollywood fame game.

They are using police escorts, fast cars and dummies to outwit paparazzi photographers; but they know they must juggle their desire for a “normal” family life with the need to keep Brand Beckham in the spotlight.

The couple’s touchdown in Tinseltown last week for Beckham’s new role as a £3m-a-year star of the LA Galaxy football team was described by one official at Los Angeles international airport as the biggest media operation there since the fallout from the 9/11 attacks.

The Beckhams are now trying to draw a line between what happens at their new £11m home in Beverly Hills and their high-profile public appearances.

At a ceremony to welcome him to the team, Beckham cited his family as “the most important thing in my life”. But his wife, who found fame as Posh Spice, had barely dumped her Louis Vuitton suitcases and Prada tote bags in the hallway of the family home before she gave her first big interview on American television on Friday night.

Tomorrow a documentary about her, Coming to America, airs across the United States.

She told Jay Leno – who is not only America’s most popular late-night television host but also one of the Beckhams’ new neighbours along with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes – that she hoped photographers would soon get bored with staking out the house.

“We will stay in most nights, watching DVDs and playing with the kids,” she said. “There are plenty more famous people in LA to photograph.”

She claimed her assistants had bought a blow-up doll from a sex shop, dressed it in one of her outfits and placed it in a chauffeur-driven car to throw the press off the scent while she was house-hunting recently.

“The paparazzi followed it for the whole day,” she told Leno.

She said she had three goals in Los Angeles: to get away from her permanent pout, which “makes me look like a miserable bitch”, look after the couple’s three children, Brooklyn, 8, Romeo, 4, and Cruz, 2, and develop her DVB clothing line.

“I do not want to act or anything like that. Maybe a few TV appearances, but no acting,” she said.

Yesterday morning there were still 40 members of the media from as far away as Norway and South Korea encamped near the Beckhams’ home off a twisting canyon road leading up into the Hollywood hills.

Any hopes that the American media would be more deferential towards the Beckhams than the British tabloids were dashed when the normally sober Los Angeles Times reported that the footballer had bought his wife an £885,000 gem-laden sex toy, referred to as Mr Sparkles on internet news sites, complete with matching 16-carat diamond necklace.

“It isn’t true,” she commented.

“We buy each other gifts, but I do not have a diamond-encrusted vibrator.”

Hours before the Beckhams arrived from London, their personal assistant signed for a delivery of LA essentials: a £75,000 Cadillac Escalade 4x4 for him and a £110,000 black Bentley Cabriolet with the initials VB monogrammed on the seats and hubcaps for her. The 32-year-old footballer, who can earn up to £130m in fees and endorsements over the next five years playing midfield for his new team, said that the 45-minute drive on the infamously congested I-405 motorway between his home and the Galaxy ground was less intimidating than he expected.

His 33-year-old wife told Leno that she knows fast cars are vital in Los Angeles, especially if one wants to elude the press without depending on the city’s police department, which will deploy three squad cars to shield the family for the immediate future. “But I am not that great a driver, but I do really try, I really do.”

Beckham has privately expressed hopes of a cameo role in a Hollywood blockbuster, maybe one produced by his friend Tom Cruise, but LA Galaxy have made it clear he will not have much time this year for playing away from home with the Hollywood moguls.

How they compare with the neighbours

The Beckhams: David, 32, and Victoria, 33. Worth £112m
New £11m home in Los Angeles is an Italian-style villa which has 13,000 sq ft of living space, six bedrooms and nine bathrooms, a pool and a three-car garage. It sits in an acre of land.

“TomKat”: Tom Cruise, 45, and Katie Holmes, 28. Worth £250m
Cruise and Holmes live in a £19m home. Originally built as a 10,000 sq ft structure in 1937 it was extended and now has seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a tennis court and a pool in 1.3 acres.

Jay Leno, 57, host of The Tonight Show since 1992. Earns £16m a year
Lives with his wife Mavis in a house modest by Beverly Hills standards but has a collection of 150 classic cars he keeps in a converted aircraft hangar.

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