Wives go out for Posh nosh

Well, it's no wonder they call her Posh. As the wife of the England captain and a woman who has had more Hello! covers than the rest of them combined, Victoria Beckham no doubt considers herself a cut above the rest of the England team's wives and girlfriends.

So when they all dined at one of Germany's most exclusive restaurants, there was no question of her sitting at the same table as Wayne Rooney's girlfriend Coleen McLoughlin or Steven Gerrard's fiancée Alex Curran and the rest of them.

She dined at a table for two with that other pop queen of the footballer's women, Girls Aloud singer Cheryl Tweedy - fiancée of Ashley Cole.

Meanwhile Sven-Goran Eriksson's fiancée Nancy Dell'Olio was at the same restaurant - with five friends at a THIRD table.

The women had all booked their places well in advance, with the restaurant's acclaimed sushi chef coming in on his day off. But while most of the wives and girlfriends seem to have been having a raucous time of it in Germany, dancing on tables, running up massive bar bills and shopping to within an inch of their lives, Victoria, 32, and Cheryl's dinner a deux in the Medici restaurant in Baden-Baden was low-key.

Enjoying the finest sushi that Bavaria has to offer and comparing notes about their respective pop careers took exactly 59 minutes.

They paid 69.80 euros for a simple meal of sea bass, sushi, two diet cokes and an £8 bottle of Evian water. The two stars - worth more than £50 million between them - left a modest five euro note as a tip ... not even 10 per cent of the bill.

This, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that the two internationally acclaimed style icons had not been seated at the restaurant's special "King's Table" which is reserved for VIP guests and has in the past seated such statesmen as Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and, er, Bono. But checking in as "Victoria and Cheryl", one could hardly excuse the staff for mistaking them as tourists. The only acknowledgement that "Victoria and Cheryl" knew any of the other women in the restaurant was when they popped their heads round the corner to say an embarrassed "hello" to the other wives as they were leaving.

They, naturally, had no intention of leaving early. The big group - which also includes Lisa Roughead (partner of Michael Carrick), Louise Bonsall (Michael Owen), Elen Rives (Frank Lampard) and Michaela Henderson-Thynne (Stewart Downing).

They stayed on for another two hours, drinking pink champagne, cognac and large whisky and cokes before walking back to their hotel - each clutching a white rose given by the restaurant. Their bill was well over 1,000 euros and a waiter said they tipped "very well".