Flecte Compar Beckhame

A hilarious item from the London Spy column in today's Daily Telegraph (reg. req.); it speaks for itself:

David Beckham's occasional visits to the tattoo parlour never fail to excite interest in the dusty world of academia. This week, he had the Latin phrase "ut amen et foveam" (that I may love and cherish) tattooed on his arm. For exegesis, it's over to the renowned classicist Peter Jones:

"The phrase is actually from the Book of Common Prayer, written in 1549 by Thomas Cramner in English," he says. "Beckham must have chosen to have the phrase translated into Latin, so one must conclude he was desperate to engender a sense of intellectual kudos."