Devil woman's football game

Move over Gareth, Will and Darius - Simon Fuller, the man behind Pop Idol and the Spice Girls, has decided that the future lies in turning footballers into global brands. After signing the Beckhams to his 19 Entertainment company last week, Fuller is quietly creating a new consultancy designed to keep dozens more sports stars on the world's front pages.

In a central London office, not far from the British Museum, the Beckhams' fearsome publicist, Caroline McAteer, is secretly working with entertainment PR Julian Henry to finalise plans for this new spin powerhouse before a formal announcement next week. With Beckham and Arsenal's Freddie Ljungberg already on board, and Michael Owen potentially next, Fuller hopes to corner the market in manufacturing the next generation of footballing celebrities.

He has already announced plans to turn the Beckhams into an "international brand", taking their name "across music, fashion and TV", and will be managing Victoria's music career as well as the couple's image. But the key element in Fuller's strategy - designed to boost a fortune estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List at £90 million - has been to poach McAteer from her former company, the Outside Organisation, to show new clients just how far personal PR could get them.

As the Beckhams' most trusted confidante, and the custodian of their image, McAteer has become a powerful if notorious figure in media circles. Journalists who have to deal with her describe her as hardnosed, bullying, ruthless and manipulative. "You know where you stand with her," says one who had to negotiate with her. "If she tells you one thing, you can believe the opposite."

The website Popbitch knows her as "the devil woman publicist", and Bryan Appleyard in The Sunday Times recently accused her of personifying "the virus of aggressive PR", seeing her job as "to abuse, humiliate and threaten us". When Rob Shepherd of the Daily Express questioned Victoria's singing abilities, McAteer telephoned to berate him before David sought to humiliate him at a press conference. After Dominik Diamond wrote a Daily Star piece suggesting that Brooklyn was looking miserable, she had David call the columnist in person to attack his judgment.

McAteer does not give on-the-record interviews, seeing her duty as to promote her clients. She did, though, give the Standard a rare "official" quote confirming the new football-based outfit. "Simon, Julian and I are developing a new set-up which will involve David and Freddie Ljungberg and will be built around a sports PR consultancy," she said. "I'm really excited about it. We've spent the past few weeks getting everything set up and hope it will all be organised in the next week or so."

In person, McAteer, 30, is slight, moderately short and attractive with shoulder-length blonde frizzy hair - hardly giving the appearance of the tyrant her reputation would lead you to expect. Yet her inscrutable straight face, and her habit of choosing her words deliberately and repeatedly declaring wide areas of conversation as out of bounds, hint at why she is known as a "control freak". (She won't say if she's single or in a relationship and will concede only that she lives in "north London". She is recently back from holiday. When the Standard asked where she'd been she said: "an island", which, when pressed, she narrowed down only to "a Mediterranean island".)

She sees herself as "straight" rather than as a bully: she receives, she says, 20 calls a day from newspapers with "ridiculous" stories about the Beckhams, and though she puts most of the plausible claims to them directly, she sees her role as being a protector, especially of the children. But others note that if she takes against somebody, their access will be ruthlessly cut off. After Richard Desmond published an allegedly unauthorised book as part of the Beckhams-OK! wedding deal, the magazine-found that interviews with the couple were no longer available.

She grew up near Belfast and left at 18 to study international economics and French in Manchester. After graduating, she moved to London and found work experience at an independent music label, Acid Jazz. "She impressed me so I gave her a job," Eddie Piller, the label's co-founder recalled. "She was very focused and always knew where she wanted to get to."

In 1997, after Alan Edwards took over managing the Spice Girls, he took McAteer on at his firm, The Outside Organisation, where she learned to handle - some say control - the press. Her clients, beyond the Spice Girls, included George Michael and Stephen Gately. After The Sun alerted her that it had been offered a story about Gately being gay and naming his boyfriend, she spent a week discussing his options with him. Even though no boy-band star had yet come out as gay, Gately decided to tell his fans himself. The Sun journalist concerned, Andy Coulson, remains a McAteer favourite in his new role editing at the News of the World. Other media contacts whom she sees socially include Victoria Newton of The Sun, the Mirror's Jessica Callan and Dylan Jones of GQ.

The Outside Organisation is known to be furious at the loss, not only of McAteer, but also some of its key clients. This being the PR industry, all Alan Edwards will say on the record is that he "wishes her all the best", and that Outside "continues to grow". The company does, however, still claim to represent David for PR purposes, and its website still lists him alongside Robbie Williams and David Bowie. McAteer insists that Beckham has no further links with Outside. There is also some confusion over where Beckham's own management, Tony Stephens at SFX Sports, fits in: although McAteer insists that they discuss his media image jointly, journalists who have found themselves briefed simultaneously by both sides suggest that there can be tension between the camps.

Will the new sports consultancy work? Mark Borkowski, whose own celebrity clients include Eddie Izzard and Graham Norton, says McAteer will find it more difficult than she thinks. "Plenty of PRs have spotted the rise and rise of football - Matthew Freud has aspirations in that direction, as do I," he said. "The problem is, footballers tend only to trust people from inside the game. And while most celebs don't expect lots of cash for giving an interview, as they're out to sell something, footballers realise that their appearances on magazine pages are worth money."

Borkowski does not deny that McAteer has "some very good connections" in the media. "But she's had some class-A products to represent, and that demands some very different skills from building up someone out of nowhere."