Curse of Beckham boots strikes TV Jamie

Lucky for him, Jamie Oliver has no time for superstition. If he did, he would most likely have a feeling of impending doom by now.

The 27-yearold Naked Chef was the toast of David Beckham's World Cup Party when he paid £29,000 at a charity auction for a signed pair of the England captain's football boots. He bought them as a good luck charm to hang on the wall of his new London restaurant.

But in a spooky twist of fate on Sunday, just hours after the boots arrived, Oliver had a kickabout and managed to damage the metatarsal bone in his foot - exactly the same bone Beckham fractured back in April.

As the chef hobbled round yesterday at the restaurant, due to open in September in Westland Place, Shoreditch, a spokesman for him said: "We're not sure if the boots are going on the wall now."

Two months ago, the Beckhams held a £350,000 party to wish good luck to the England team in Japan and raise cash for the NSPCC. At the auction, Beckham's Adidas Predators started a biddingwar between Oliver and Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall. Neither would budge, so Beckham gave both identical pairs of signed Predators - each for £29,000. Oliver also bought two tickets to all England's games in the World Cup, flying Virgin upper class return, for £14,000. The two lots - worth £43,000 - made him the biggest spender of the night.

But when the boots arrived, things went pearshaped. Later Oliver went for a kickabout during a "sourcing" trip to Cumbria - looking for the perfect beef farmer to use for the restaurant. Oliver said during a particularly hefty kick "I hit the ball on a volley and I now have the same thing as David Beckham had wrong with his foot".