Inside Jude Bellingham's wild world: From the army of female fans who've found an unlikely target for their X-rated messages... to the truth about his 'girlfriend' and the woman he calls 'The Queen'
When a promising young Birmingham footballer offered to support a charity that educates impoverished African children, its founder eagerly welcomed him on board.
Though Jude Bellingham was then a callow schoolboy, not yet 16, whose sublime talent was little known beyond the Midlands, Rita Fowler was impressed by his strong social conscience and a commitment that saw him donate his prized Adidas boots to raise funds.
Fast forward five years and Bellingham, who celebrated his 21st birthday yesterday, is now a global icon. Commendably, however, he remains a devoted ambassador for the Mustard Seed Project (Kenya), a small, Peterborough-based charity which built and now funds a school in Mombasa.
Mrs Fowler is enormously grateful for the generosity of Bellingham and his family.
However, she tells me his burgeoning band of young female admirers – many of them unashamedly brazen – are becoming a nuisance.
England football star Jude Bellingham, 21, with his mother Denise, 54, at this year's Champions League Final earlier this month
In bygone days, pin-up footballers such as George Best would receive letters from girl fans requesting autographed photos and mementos; bolder types might ask for a date. But Bellingham's belles are far more forward, she says.
To encourage contact from potential new backers, Mrs Fowler lists her phone number on Mustard Seed's Instagram account.
However, as the charity's logo is also displayed prominently on Bellingham's profile, followed by 33.4 million fans and fast-rising, Mrs Fowler is being bombarded with messages from young women desperate to meet him.
'These girls aren't saying they want to marry him. They are saying they want to have sex with him,' says the exasperated Peterborough-based charity's 77‑year-old director. 'Some of them are almost prostituting themselves. They describe what they would like to do with Jude and send pictures of themselves with those big lips that they have nowadays.'
She adds: 'It's very irritating. I'm getting thousands of these messages. They must think I've got this magical contact with Jude. Of course, I don't pass them on, but when they seem genuine, I do sometimes reply to say: 'I'm sorry, I can't help.'
She is reluctant to remove her phone number from Instagram because she wants to engage with people genuinely interested in Mustard Seed's Project.
It is not Bellingham's fault, of course, that he is attracting this kind of attention from women seemingly more interested in his film star looks and glamorous lifestyle than his genius with a ball. Yet Bellingham is the very antithesis of the stereotypical playboy footballer.
With his many admirable qualities (he is praised for his eloquence, humility, clean-living family lifestyle and his strong social conscience) he is regarded as a trailblazer, restoring the battered image of the game's pampered stars.
Simon Chadwick, professor of sport finance at Skema Business School in France, describes him as 'the quintessential Generation Z footballer, perfectly in tune with the youthful fans of today', just as the metrosexual David Beckham, with his Spice Girl wife, was a symbol for the Noughties.
Bellingham has been romantically linked in recent months to Dutch lingerie model Laura Celia Valk
Bellingham posed for Kim Kardashian's Skims underwear brand where he stripped down to his boxer shorts
Why, the word from the locker room is that his perfect, 6ft 1in, 11st 8lb frame isn't blemished by a single tattoo.
So why have I begun this profile with Mrs Fowler's somewhat surprising anecdote? Because it is a timely reminder of the off-field pressures facing England's new talisman, in this social media-driven, image-obsessed age. Such distractions are one of the many reasons being offered for Bellingham's perplexing loss of form at the Euros.
He arrived at the tournament carrying the hopes of every England fan on his sinewy shoulders. Where Gazza, Beckham, and so many others had abjectly failed, Jude Victor William Bellingham, whose dynamic game was seemingly without a weakness, would bring football home.
The fantasy is still being played out in an uplifting TV advert for Adidas, for whom he is the new face. As Bellingham scores the spectacular solo goal that ends 58 years of hurt, delirious fans spray the air with beer and Paul McCartney's baleful rendition of Hey Jude becomes a jubilant paean that echoes through towns and cities around the country. 'You got this,' says a slogan superimposed over the nation's saviour.
Many of us bought into that beautiful image and in the first match against Serbia, he repaid our faith with a virtuoso display, capped by a magnificent winning goal.
Worryingly, however, in the two following games he performed so poorly that some pundits even suggested that Gareth Southgate should drop him from today's last‑16 contest with Slovakia. Had anyone given vent to such thoughts when the tournament began, they would have been advised to see a shrink.
After all, Bellingham was the top scorer in a star-studded Real Madrid team that won the Champions League this season, and his pedigree is beyond question.
When he is in full flow, there is no Englishman to compare. If we are to have any chance of winning the tournament, we desperately need him firing on all cylinders.
Yet with the team clearly malfunctioning, Bellingham is being singled out for criticism – not only for his poor play, but for body language that too often resembles that of a petulant kid who is losing a playground kickabout.
When teammates opt not to pass to him, he either berates them or theatrically sulks. Opponents who dare to tackle him are menacingly eyeballed and barged. Top players must have attitude, but at times he has looked close to the edge.
This is not the Jude England fans revere. The Brummie lad who usually shows such maturity that, despite his tender age, he is among a cabal of senior players who Southgate consults on everything, from tactics to pastoral matters.
So, what has dimmed our most dazzling star, and how can he regain his rightful place in the firmament? One theory holds that Bellingham is becoming a victim to the hype that now surrounds him. Ludicrously, after a prodigious start to his career with Birmingham City and Germany's Borussia Dortmund, and one brilliant season in Spain, he is already being compared with legends such as Pele, Maradona, Messi and Ronaldo.
Given his rare gifts, it may not be beyond him to join this pantheon one day, yet surely we ought to dial down the superlatives and let him develop. The weight of expectation is all too evident.
A young Bellingham with his father Mark, 47. Alongside being a police officer, Mark was a deadly non-league striker
Another possibility is that he is not fully fit, either because he is quietly carrying a shoulder injury (he pledged before the Euros began to put his body on the line for England and it would be typically unselfish of him to push himself to the very limits), or simply because he is mentally and physically drained.
The latter theory gathered credence on Thursday when he confessed to feeling 'absolutely dead' in England's last match, against Slovenia, but had drawn energy from fans chanting his name. 'The important thing is, when you're wearing this badge and representing those fans, you don't give up,' he said, ever the patriot.
Fatigue also seems likely when we consider that the Slovakia match (if he is selected) will be his 105th in just two seasons, and that, since making his debut for Birmingham City – aged 16 years and 38 days – he has torn around the turf for almost 19,000 minutes: five times longer than Beckham at the same age.
Given that everyone wants a piece of Bellingham, however, and given his burgeoning non-footballing commitments – many commercial – we are entitled to ask another uncomfortable question.
Could it be that – as with tennis golden girl Emma Raducanu, who has thus far failed to scale the heights that beckoned after she won the US Open – Bellingham, at just 21, has too much on his plate?
As well as being the new face of Adidas, he supplements his reported £11.4million a year Real Madrid salary by endorsing products such as Lucozade and Kim Kardashian's Skims underwear brand, for whose ads he is required to strip down to his boxer shorts.
Whether he relishes his new sex symbol status we don't know. Yet his cultivated machismo appeal feeds into a diversion I have already highlighted: those cloying admirers.
Accurately or otherwise, Bellingham has been romantically linked in recent months with three glamorous women who flaunt themselves on social media: Ghanaian influencer Asantewa Chitty, American vlogger Azra Mian, and latterly Dutch lingerie model Laura Celia Valk (whose latest pose saw her eating pizza in a red bra and knickers).
And it says much about the artificial world into which he has been thrust that his so-called relationship with Valk probably never happened. As the Daily Mail has revealed, it appears to have been PR spin concocted by a Manchester clothing company for which she models.
When Gareth Southgate compared the hoopla now beginning to engulf Bellingham with the circus that once surrounded Beckham, perhaps this was the sort of nonsense he was alluding to. 'This is Jude's world today,' the England manager said with a frisson of concern, even before the Euros began.
Fortunately, as Bellingham faces up to the first setback in his career he has the support of a rock-solid family. For his parents Mark, 47, who is of Irish descent, and Denise, 56, whose heritage is West Indian, are a formidable pair.
Described by Bellingham as solidly working class, the couple, who still live in an unostentatious detached house in Worcestershire, have plotted his rise assiduously and tightly control every aspect of his professional life. Insiders agree that they have been integral to his success.
After leaving Wolverhampton University, Mark Bellingham joined West Midlands Police, becoming a sergeant. Intriguingly, a friend of Bellingham senior tells me he 'worked undercover' at one time. According to another source, his ability to relate to young people saw him co-opted, with social workers and psychologists, into a unit tasked with identifying teenagers at risk of radicalisation and setting them on the right path.
Mr Bellingham's posts on X, formerly Twitter, also reveal his vehement social and political views – very much of the Left. Many comments draw attention to the plight of the poor and homeless, as well as racism and perceived failures of the criminal justice system.
'Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse,' he wrote in 2018, four years before retiring to qualify as a Fifa agent and manage the business affairs of Jude and younger brother, Jobe, 18, who plays for Sunderland.
His father's influence may help to explain Jude's values. Though we are seeing a less edifying side to his character as he struggles to rediscover his genius, his caring nature frequently shines through.
Born in Dudley, on June 29, 2003, Bellingham's back-story should hearten every parent who dreams of seeing their infant son or daughter gracing a Three Lions shirt, writes David Jones
Spotting a Real Madrid ballboy shivering on the touchline on a freezing night last winter, Bellingham swaddled the lad in the thermal blanket he had been given to stay warm on the subs' bench.
Born in Dudley, on June 29, 2003, his back-story should hearten every parent who dreams of seeing their infant son or daughter gracing a Three Lions shirt, only to watch them skip uninterestedly around the park when presented with their first plastic ball.
It should also serve as a lesson to pushy mums and dads who try to hothouse their children to excel at sport.
Until he was six years old, Bellingham recently told a French magazine, he 'didn't like soccer at all'. His father told him to play hide-and-seek or pick flowers off the pitch if he wasn't enjoying a practice session, so he would make daisy chains to give to his mother.
When not on police duty, however, Mark Bellingham was a deadly non-league striker and as he watched his dad salute a few hundred spectators after hitting the net on some cabbage-patch pitch, Jude caught the bug.
At six, says Gary Hackett, who played alongside Bellingham senior at Halesowen Town, Jude's preternatural coordination and speed were already evident.
His athleticism was underpinned by a fierce competitive streak, and a brain that instantly absorbed coaching instructions: qualities that saw him enrolled into Birmingham City's academy.
That said, he could be headstrong to a fault, even then.
Feeling that academy boss Mike Dodds had treated him unfairly in training, Bellingham refused to speak to him for three months.
But nothing could hold him back. By his mid-teens, major clubs across Europe were fighting to sign him.
Arsenal tried to lure him with a one-off payment of £500,000; Manchester United attempted to dazzle him with an introduction to legends Sir Alex Ferguson and Eric Cantona.
His parents were not to be tempted, for they had a less conventional plan.
Placing his long-term development above short-term rewards, they guided him towards Dortmund, renowned for their careful nurturing of youthful talent.
It proved to be a masterstroke. By 17, Bellingham, who learned to speak German and embraced its culture, was mature beyond his years and achieved another milestone as the European Champions League's youngest ever English player.
Told his performance against Manchester City had won praise from their great manager Pep Guardiola, however, his reply was telling.
Had the compliments come from his father, he said, they would have meant 'a million times' more. In more recent interviews, Bellingham has placed similar importance on his mother's support.
As his father now spends much of his time on Wearside with younger brother Jobe, it is Denise who plays the more hands-on part in his life.
Formerly employed in human resources, she now resides with her son at La Finca, an ultra-exclusive Madrid compound with bunker-like security, serving variously as his financial manager, 'soulmate' and occasional chauffeur, driving him to training in his £150,000 BMW hybrid SUV.
Since Bellingham's only brush with the law came two years ago in Birmingham, when he was charged with using his mobile phone at the wheel and failing to provide information to identify the driver – cases later discontinued for lack of evidence – perhaps he is wise for him to leave his mum to negotiate the Madrid traffic.
Don't for a moment think she's his dogsbody, however. Bellingham refers to her as 'the Queen', crediting her for keeping him grounded and on an even keel.
'She's a great laugh as well,' he adds. 'We get on so well and we're always doing stuff together. The role my mum is playing is massive. It's probably the biggest role of anyone, more than the managers and coaches to be honest.'
As Gareth Southgate searches for the key to unlock Bellingham's brilliance, maybe he should bear those words in mind and seek Denise's advice.
For in football there is an old saying: form is temporary but class is permanent.
Bellingham has class in abundance and, though his form has eluded him recently, there is still time for him to light up the Euros.
Hey Jude, we all know you got this – so, starting this evening, take a sad song and make it better.
