Poor Victoria Beckham. It was all going so well: the headline-grabbing soft-porn photoshoot with “hubby” David for W magazine; the television documentary, screened last week, in which she came across surprisingly well. Admittedly, the bit in the credits that said “the part of Victoria Beckham’s personal assistant is played by an actress” implied a degree of staging; but everyone who saw it said that they warmed to her, and that they thought she came across as a woman with a sense of humour – even wit.

Then came Calfgate. For those readers with better things to do, I’ll explain: some photographs were taken of Mrs Beckham stepping out in to the bright California sunshine in the skimpiest of miniskirts. Instead of the hoped-for photo-opportunity, a PR disaster occurred: the calf and thigh of her left leg looked weird, all knobbly and pockmarked – like putty, or bonded gravel. Not good for a woman famous for her legs. The gossips went into overdrive: had Posh’s hitherto perfect pins finally gone the way of all flesh and developed cellulite? How would this impact on her chances of “making it big in America”?

Naturally, the web was awash with theories. Is this what no exercise and a strict diet of fish (apparently Posh’s method of staying in shape) do to you? Was this proof that Posh is, as many have long suspected, an alien, and that her human form is starting to melt in the California heat? Every bitchy female columnist lined up to stick the knife in, some even wondering whether the uneven skin was the result of fat having been taken from her calf to use in her breast implants (unlikely, since it is possible to give someone breast implants, even quite big ones, without taking flesh from elsewhere in the body). Could it have been caused by liposuction gone wrong?

The possibilities were endless. One thing is certain, however: moving to California may not have been such a great idea. For women over 30 (and Beckham is 33), strong sunshine shows no mercy, and LA is famous for its bright sunlight. It is one of the reasons why women in LA are so obsessed with punishing exercise regimens and plastic surgery – the sun shows up their slightest imperfections.

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Personally, I don’t think cellulite is to blame. It is, of course, perfectly possible to get cellulite on your calves – you can get the wretched stuff practically anywhere – but on the legs it tends to gather on the fatty bit on the inside of the knee, and Beckham has little actual muscle, let alone fat, on her legs. She might have had some liposuction (a new treatment, SmartLipo, uses a laser and leaves only a very small puncture wound, so is ideal for legs and arms), and that might have caused some unevenness under the surface of her skin. Dr Barry J. Cohen, a Washington-based plastic surgeon, says: “Posh appears as if she has been the victim of poor liposuction. Short of a shark bite, little else yields that type of depression in the fat. Poor thing.”

If her diet really is as frugal as it would seem, perhaps she is suffering from vitamin and/or mineral deficiencies, which would inevitably have an impact on the overall quality and elasticity of her skin. If the skin is not properly supported by muscle and, yes, fat, it will lose tone.

Perhaps there is a less sinister explanation. Perhaps she suffers from hives or urticaria, both of which make the surface of the skin lumpy and bumpy. Looking closely at these pictures, it does appear that she is either wearing fake tan or body make-up, so maybe this is the result of an ill-advised attempt to cover up an allergy. In the saucy W shoot, she is strapped into the most excruciating-looking pair of PVC thigh-high boots: could she have had a reaction to those? Maybe it’s heat rash – or maybe she was just sitting oddly in the limo, and her skin has been temporarily imprinted with the pattern of the seat fabric.

Whatever the cause may be, my advice to Posh is this: move back to Britain, where complexion-flattering cloud cover and a cool, damp climate are always assured – even in the height of summer.

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