Alex Salmond has encouraged a Cabinet minister to "bend one for Beckham" as he mocked the former England captain's knighthood snub.
The SNP MP joked that there is "shock and disappointment" being felt across Scotland over David Beckham's anger at the lack of an honour.
He added these feelings were due to his "fawning support" for the pro-Union campaign during the Scottish independence referendum.
Leaked emails include one in which Beckham criticises the honours committee, which decides on recipients, as "a bunch of c***s" and brands the honours system as "a f****** joke".
A representative of the ex-Manchester United and Real Madrid star said the messages released gave a "deliberately inaccurate picture".
The representative labelled them as "outdated material taken out of context from hacked and doctored private emails from a third-party server".
Former Scottish first minister Mr Salmond asked Commons Leader David Lidington: "Can we have a statement on the shock and disappointment being felt across Scotland at the failure of former England captain David Beckham to gain a knighthood?
"This is particularly the case since he'd been advised that his fawning support for the Better Together campaign in 2014 would play well with the establishment, and in turn help your knighthood.
"We can all associate with his sense of disappointment when he replied they're a bunch of expletive deletives 'It's a disgrace to be honest - if I was American I'd have got this 10 years ago'.
"Surely the leader of the House can bend one for Beckham?"
Mr Lidington replied: "I wasn't quite sure whether you were speaking on behalf of Mr Beckham or whether there was perhaps some other motive there, a yearning for the knighthood yourself.
"I can honestly say to you that this is not a matter for me."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel