Imagine if Madonna had turned Dennis Rodman into a stable domestic partner. Or if Mariah Carey and Derek Jeter had actually produced issue. Double that kind of fame quotient—now add a zero. You're beginning to understand the cultural pre-eminence enjoyed in Britain by Victoria "Posh Spice" Adams and her soccer-star husband, David Beckham.

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In July the supermodish couple staged an extravagantly gauche wedding that dwarfed the summer nuptials of the Queen's recalcitrant son Edward and his demure bride, Sophie Rhys-Jones. Then again, Adams and Beckham did have at their disposal the $1.6 million that the trashy British magazine OK! paid for exclusive photo rights to their Big Day.

The "Posh" and "Becks" phenomenon is the product of British tabloid culture, a celebrity particle accelerator that makes American counterparts look primitive by comparison. The U.K.'s populist "red top" newspapers pump up the pulse of British life, and they compete ferociously for every fleeting image of Beckham and Adams. The most spurious story about the toothsome duo can end up setting the national agenda. (Beckham wraps a Gaultier sarong over his trousers—let's re-evaluate British manhood!)

Since the birth of their son, Brooklyn, in March, Becks and Posh have started to see the dark side of the paparazzi flashbulbs. "It is hard," says the 25-year-old Adams. "Because as much as you say, 'The press have done this and they've done that,' you need each other at the start of your career. But it does get to the stage where we would like to take Brooklyn out without thinking, Let's cover his face up. I find it sick—people hiding, trying to get pictures of a little baby."

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Even the Scottish Highlands offer no refuge to Beckham and Adams. En route to a country estate near Inverness, they cower in their chauffeur-driven car as local paparazzi attempt to capture the Becks-Posh image of the day. After five minutes on the idyllic country roads, the tabloid desperadoes try to pull past Adams and Beckham's car, but the chauffeur rises to the challenge. He pulls out into the middle of the road and weaves from side to side, blocking the predators' progress. Meantime, from the opposite direction, a car races toward them. When the chauffeur pulls over to let the car pass, a paparazzo sees his moment. He tries to overtake the car in between his and his quarry's, but the chauffeur won't slow down, nearly forcing the paparazzo into a major pileup. A cluster of sheep look up, bemused by the commotion. "You get used to it after a while," says Beckham, a car-chase veteran at 24.

When they met, in February 1997, Posh and Becks were already fully accredited celebrities in their own right. He was a world-class asset of Manchester United Football Club; she was the Spice Girl who looked good in Gucci. (He earned an estimated $5 million last year; she did even better.) When two became one, they outstripped their natural teenage constituencies and transfixed the nation. Every matching fashion-victor outfit they unveil at celebrity photo ops is spread across countless newspaper pages, and their every shopping spree is covered like a prime-ministerial briefing. Beckham's and Adams's primary talents have been all but subsumed by their twin roles as conspicuous consumers.

"We do like shopping, but not to the extent that everybody makes out," protests Adams, who today is wearing a version of Gucci's collarless, 70s-style brown leather jacket and a black Atlanta Braves baseball cap. Beckham, as always, is wearing an identical combination. "We're like everybody," says Adams. "We like buying new clothes, but that isn't the be-all and end-all in life. I've always liked clothes ever since I was very young. I remember when I was signing on the dole [drawing unemployment] at 16, me and my sister used to go up and buy a pair of Patrick Cox shoes together and share them. Once someone gave me a designer carrier bag, and I used to use it to carry my schoolbooks in." On this day her luggage is Vuitton.

Adams loudly dismisses another popular notion—that she dominates her notoriously inscrutable spouse. "I've got a bit of a big mouth, haven't I?" she allows. "I just like talking—I'm bossy! But it's harmless. I'm not nasty or anything." David, she says, is not "thick" but "deep," although she can joke about it. "We played Trivial Pursuit the other day, when we were on holiday, and I was devastated because I got beaten by David Beckham!"

And yes, she assures us, they really do love each other. "People have often thought that we were put together and it's a publicity thing," Adams says. "And they think I'm really miserable. But I'm the happiest person around. I don't stop smiling."

Adams flashes a big grin at her man.

She resembles nothing so much as a Japanimation character come to life. Beckham smiles back and reaches out a hand.

If this sounds cloying, it comes across as anything but. In fact, they seem more like a prom queen and her football-captain beau than like two hypercelebrities on the verge of media meltdown.

The last year of Beckham and Adams's modem romance should have come directly from a silverembossed airport novel. First came the fall: During last year's World Cup, Beckham's petulant kick at an opponent effectively got England bounced from the tournament. He was pilloried in the press and lynched in effigy by furious fans. "I knew I was going to get a certain amount of abuse," says Beckham. "But to be fair, I've had that since I came to the team and since I've been going out with Victoria. I've had to adapt to it and learn to block it out."

Meanwhile, the Spice Girls struggled through an American tour without founding member Geri "Ginger Spice" Halliwell (she resigned and went solo) and their Svengali-like manager, Simon Fuller (he was fired). Plus, Adams was pregnant. "

The sustained excellence of Beckham's on-field performances last season slackened the jaws of his persecutors. And by; the time Adams gave birth to Brooklyn Joseph Beckham in March, Dad's team was in serious contention for three major trophies, including soccer's holy grail— the European Champions League cup. In late May, with two-thirds of the "treble" in the bag, Manchester United beat German champions Bayern Munich 2-1 in the Champions League final. Both goals were scored in the game's final moments, and both came from Beckham corner kicks.

The imminent Posh-Becks wedding further intensified the pursuit of trivia about them. The papers even got hold of the newly minted crest (replete with the unfortunate initials "V.D.") that would decorate the wedding invitations, and found heraldry experts to say that the right-pointing swan was decidedly wrong.

"We played Trivial Pursuit the other day, when we were on holiday says Posh. "I was devastated because I got beaten by David Beckham!"

"So what if the poxy swan is the wrong way?" snaps the woman once dubbed Relatively Posh Spice. "Does anybody really give a shit—d'you know what I mean? Having your own crest—it's one of them, innit?" Adams pokes her tongue into her cheek. "We're just thinking, This is the biggest day of our lives—we're just going to go over the top and make it entertaining for everybody."

No one could have failed to be entertained by OK! magazine's coverage of the Posh-Becks wedding near Dublin. The unwittingly camp weekly devoted more than a hundred pages to Beckham and Adams in special issues. Readers were shown every possible angle of the $80,000 wedding dress created for Adams by Vera Wang and the international corsetier Mr. Pearl; saw bride and groom swanning around in postceremonial purple outfits; puzzled over the couple's twin thrones, not to mention the putative "Robin Hood" theme of the whole affair.

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In more stringent times, Beckham and Adams might have been hung in effigy for their collective excesses, but as Britain retools itself for the new century, moral certainty is in short supply. Self-styled aristocrats such as Becks and Posh may be vulgar, but at least they pay no fealty to Britain's hide-bound past: there was no "obey" in her wedding vow; he plays Tupac CDs in his Ferrari.

Then again, Adams will tell you that she and her husband are not the party-hopping parvenus that the tabloids would suggest. "We're not the kind of people who will be out every Saturday night at the most trendiest club," she says. "We do that occasionally, and, yes, we go to parties.... We'll sit for half an hour, then we'll go home and put our pajamas on."

Just as the guilelessly aspirational tastes of David Beckham and Victoria Adams reflect post-Thatcher Britain, they equally recall the Thatcherite 1980s. The devoutly Republican Margaret Thatcher should be happy to see this clean-cut, upwardly mobile couple from her southern heartland replacing the House of Windsor in the public's affections. And in this post-Diana age, you can be sure that the Queen is eager to abdicate the media spotlight. So there you have it, by consensus both popular and posh: David Beckham and Victoria Adams are the royal family of shopping.

"People have thought it's a publicity thing." Posh says. "And they think I'm miserable. But I'm the happiest person around."