Next Show, His First Shower With Club

British soccer star David Beckham has fame, fortune, a pop star wife and ... no privacy.

England’s soccer captain had a physical examination Tuesday, a final step before his transfer from Manchester United to Real Madrid becomes official.

The procedures took a little less than two hours, something we know for sure because the process had many witnesses.

Beckham’s physical was televised on 39 channels worldwide, among them Real Madrid’s pay-per-view station, and even had a sponsor -- the Spanish health insurer Grupo Sanitas, which coughed up $415,000.

Star treatment: Beckham arrived in Madrid with wife Victoria, formerly Posh of the Spice Girls, and eldest son Brooklyn aboard a private jet.

They were whisked into a waiting luxury sedan, which had a police escort on its way to a hospital where Beckham had his exam.

Tuesday night, the Beckhams stayed in a $2,000-a-night hotel suite -- reportedly free of charge.

Today, Beckham will officially be introduced as a member of the team, an event the soccer club is wrestling to control, having reportedly rejected some 500 credential applications from celebrity press.

“Madrid would have committed a mistake if it allowed the presentation of a magnificent player like David to become a circus

Uh-huh.

Trivia time: On this date in 1921, the Jack Dempsey-Georges Carpentier heavyweight bout at Rickard’s Orchard in New Jersey set what boxing record?

Tripping out: Nan Keohane, president of Duke, has opposed Atlantic Coast Conference expansion, in part, because it will mean more travel.

An interesting stance, noted Mark Bradley in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, considering Duke’s men’s basketball team toured “nearby England” last fall.

Drop-off: Based on his three sons and their friends all wanting to walk out of the movie “Hulk,” Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News predicts, “We’re going to see the kind of box-office dip this week that Greg Maddux used to have on his sinker.”

Buck passing: Comedian Argus Hamilton says the Milwaukee Bucks declining Michael Jordan’s bid to buy the team is probably for the best.

With Jordan’s “history of gambling and womanizing and going to strip bars,” Hamilton noted, “he is wasting his life if he doesn’t become a college football coach.”

Trivia answer: It was boxing’s first million-dollar gate as 80,183 paid $1,789,238 to watch Dempsey win by knockout in the fourth round.

And finally: Results of a Scholastic News online poll showed 63% of 46,000 responses from students in Grades 1-8 believe Sammy Sosa still deserves a place in baseball’s record book, even though he got caught using a corked bat.

An opposing view came from Matthew D., 7, who said he didn’t believe Sosa belonged “because he could have been using the corked bat more than once and maybe this was the only time he was actually caught.”

Cynical, huh? He should be a sports reporter.

-- Mike Hiserman