LONDON -- I wasn't a fan and felt disquiet over his sleepovers with pubescent boys, the expensive toys he bought them, the fast cars and bling he gave their parents, the multimillion-dollar payoffs to make lawsuits go away. The extreme dysmorphic surgical mutilation was grotesque.

I saw his press conference on TV in March announcing the London concerts. I watched because by then I and millions of others around the world had developed a morbid fascination for Wacko Jacko -- what did he look like now? How frail -- mentally and physically -- was he?

He made everyone wait two hours and stayed for five minutes.

“This is it. When I say this is it, it really means this is it,” he said as thousands of fans screamed, cried, fainted. A friend later phoned to say he really looked weird, but hey, let’s go see his show.

“Before he dies,” she added. 750,000 tickets sold out within hours of the conference.

The King of Pop is dead; long live the King! Now he’s dead, he’s made for life. His death is probably the best career move he’d ever made.

Speaking of career moves, who would have thought nipples could be used to such effect to court media attention: the more prominent the better for Fleet Street paps. As Victoria Beckham knows only too well. The embonpoint of her nipples, under a sheer top, once again caused commotion as she was recently snapped shopping in London.

Beckham, reported The Sun, recently went under the knife, to reduce her cup size and replace her implants from a braggadocious 34DD to a more subdued B.

When she began her popstrel life as alleged singer with the Spice Girls, Beckham’s breasts were a natural -- but perhaps not boobylicious enough -- 34A.

An operation in 1999 augmented these to 34D and with another procedure, in 2001, they became 34DD whoppers.

“I’m completely natural,” she protested, but was later forced to admit she had lied about her implants. American Vogue editor Anna Wintour is said to have told Beckham to lose the “ridiculous things.”

In a flash of self-mockery, but probably more of a bid to be taken seriously by the fashion world (where less, really, is more), Beckham recently said: “When I see the photos, I think, crikey, my boobs are up round my neck again!”

Birkins to die for

Many years ago, my husband -- who had exquisite taste -- said he would buy me a Kelly bag if I’d lose a bit of weight. Well, ok, some weight.

When he popped into Hermés on Bond Street, he was flabbergasted when told he would have to go on the wait list. “For a kidney, yes,” he said, “not a bag!”

So it’s a bit off-putting to find out that Beckham has a £1.5 million hoard of Birkin bags. This is either a new height of fabulousness or a poverty of affluence.

Birkins start at about £4,500, rising to £80,000 for the diamond-encrusted Himalayan version, which Beckham -- one of only three in the world -- has. Exotic Birkins come in crocodile, lizard and ostrich pelts.

The bag (calm down, dear, it’s only a bag!) is named after the singer/actress Jane Birkin who, on a Paris to London flight, in 1984, sat next to Hermés’ CEO, Jean-Louis Dumas.

Urban legend says she told him about the difficulty in finding a leather weekend bag. He asked her to describe what it would look like. A few days later, the original Birkin was delivered to her home, and a must-have was born, “for people who lacked for nothing, but longed for more.”

Only five Birkins a week are made in Hermés’ atelier, and the wait list, operated on a first-come, first-served basis, opens only twice a year -- in the spring and fall.

Birkin announced in 2006 she was retiring hers.

“I love my Birkin, but I lug so much stuff in it it’s part of the reason I have tendonitis,” she said.

“Women love Birkins,” Tatler, without tongue in its self-regarding cheek, decreed, “because they make them feel rich and in the right circle. Not having one feeds on their social insecurities.”

Ouch! How bereft must one’s life be for a bag to wreak such neurotic havoc?

And, no, I didn’t lose weight.

Eye candy at Wimbledon. -- best tennis

Another glorious Wimbledon is over, with Roger Federer making tennis history, in the pulverizing final against Andy Roddick. Amid a gaggle of former champions at Centre Court, John McEnroe was prompted to say: “He [Federer] makes us all look so average!”

This quintessentially British sports event bucked the recession and more than half-a-million spectators descended on London SW19 for the best tennis in the world.

Ticket applications were up by a fifth this year. The All England Club had already sold out of its latest 2011-2015 Centre Court debentures, despite a price tag of £27,750 for each of the 2,500 debentures.

While other sporting events wither on the vine for lack of sponsors and advertisers, Wimbledon rakes in the big-money brands, including Slazenger, IBM, Rolex and broadcast rights in 180 countries -- probably the single best advertisement for Britain these days.

Tennis always enjoys a resurgence post-Wimbledon: parents signing up their kids for tennis camps, until they come to their senses, do their sums and realize the financial commitments involved.

The Association of Accounting Technicians recently said that it would cost from £2.5 million to create a Wimbledon champ. This investment includes the cost of lessons, tennis academies, summer camps, coaches, physiotherapists, fitness trainers, nutritionists, business managers, PR.

I think championship-material players are born and nurtured. They live -- from a very young age -- for the game, to the exclusion of everything else.

We had a bumper number of female Russian players competing this year, all of them looking like glamour-pusses. Where do they find them? What are they fed on?

Speaking of looks, former champion Michael Stich told Radio 5 that women players are there not to play well, but to look sexy.

“That’s what they sell,” he said. Pat Cash, 1987 champion, compared our very own Andy Murray unfavorably with ’80s players who had female fans screaming.

“In my day,” he said in a classic case of logorrhoea, “the men’s locker rooms were at the front of the building, which meant we had to run the gauntlet of screaming fans to get in.

We’d sit there laughing and guessing from the volume of screams who was going to enter the room. Would it be Stefan Edberg, Mats Wilander or Boris? Often it was Boris. I don’t think Andy Murray’s ever going to be that kind of eye candy.”

Just as well Cash was nowhere near fans at Murray Mount or he would’ve been lynched.

Out with animal grunting

According to noise experts, women players’ grunting has reached hazardous levels. At the French Open, Michelle Larcher de Brito was booed off court for grunting.

“I don’t think it’s fair not to be allowed to scream or grunt. It’s part of the game,” said a defiant De Brito, whose 109-decibel grunts are so loud they can be heard from three courts away.

The grunts have been likened to the wailing of mating cats, the screeching of a woman in labor, hardcore-porn groans.

Martina Navratilova -- nine times champion -- called on umpires to crack down on grunters.

“The grunting is a form of cheating and should be stamped out. The umpires should say ‘you need to cool it down a bit. Do it again and it’s a point penalty.’”

Maria Sharapova’s grunts register 101 decibels, the equivalent of a plane landing. She said she’s been grunting “since age 4 and I can’t help it.”

Monica Seles, who won in 1992, was a 93-decibel grunter; her two-tone scream was an “anticipatory moan, followed by a high-pitched groan of exertion.”

The Williams sisters are also notorious grunters, with Serena clocking 88.9 decibels, and Venus 85, the equivalent of a lawnmower in full pelt.

The problem, as officials of the International Tennis Federation see it, is determining whether a noisy exhalation of air is natural, or if it’s done deliberately to put off an opponent.

Put a sock in it now!

Wimbledon, the well-behaved spiritual home of tennis, said it’s committed to keeping the noise under 65 decibels -- a consideration Caroline Cartwright, 48, might learn from.