British glamour couple David and Victoria Beckham have launched legal action to prevent lurid details of their private life supplied by a disaffected former bodyguard from appearing in a new biography, court officials said Monday.
The Manchester United football star and his pop star wife are objecting to some 2,500 words out of a 60,000-word book, which is to be called "Posh and Becks" and penned by controversial biographer Andrew Morton.
The offending paragraphs were supposedly based on conversations which Morton had with Mark Niblett, a former bodyguard to the Beckham family, who had signed a confidentiality clause.
The Beckhams are arguing that the information supplied by Niblett, who left their service in May, should be struck out of the manuscript.
The Beckhams' lawyer, Michael Tugendhat, said that Niblett "acted or attempted to act in disregard of his plain and obvious duties of confidentiality by offering a very large amount of material to Mr Morton, most of which he did not use".
Morton argues that the material he used was either not confidential or already in the public domain.
Lawyers for both sides huddled on Tuesday to seek a possible compromise.
Failing an out-of-court agreement, a judge will hear the couple's plea.
Morton created a stir with an earlier biography, a best-seller that revealed some of the darkest secrets of the late Diana, Princess of Wales – LONDON (AFP)
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