Letters and drawing by schoolboy Beckham sold at auction

Mar 13, 2006, 19:38 GMT

London - Letters written by footballer David Beckham when he was a teenager, revealing his weakness for girls and his joy at his first modest wage packet sold for 900 pounds (1,600 dollars) at auction Monday.

The two letters, and a drawing, were penned by the England captain when he was just 16 years old.

In them he reveals his trainee wage packet was 120 pounds.

'I got my first wage packet the other day and a bonus which come to 120 pounds, so that I went to the bank and I have got about 250 pounds in there now', wrote the footballer, who now earns an estimated 100,000 pounds a week at Real Madrid.

The letters were written to his friend Lee and the picture, which accompanies the first letter, is of a greyhound called Rosie Red.

'I've been doing really well with my football as well as with girls, because we are United players and they all want to go with us,' Beckham wrote within days of signing with Manchester United as a trainee in the summer of 1991.

The letters were sold at Bonhams auction house in Chester, northwest Britain, and were expected to fetch up to 1,500 pounds.

A statement said: 'For someone who has dominated the headlines in recent years for his performance both on the pitch and off it, the unpublished letters add yet another dimension to the sporting legend's public profile.'