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Victoria Beckham says she and husband/soccer star David are astonished by... ( LEFTERIS PITARAKIS )

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As Posh Spice, she was just one of the Girls. But as the wife of soccer superstar David Beckham, Victoria Beckham has become celebrity royalty.

A decade after the Spice Girls topped charts worldwide with "Wannabe," "Posh and Becks" remain England's most photographed and talked-about couple.

Beckham has focused on fashion, not music, in recent years, but in June she joined her fellow band members to announce the Spice Girls' first tour since 2001. In July, she made headlines again with an exhaustively hyped move to Los Angeles, where David is the Galaxy's new star attraction.

We spoke to Beckham, 33, on July 27, the day the group announced it was adding a Dec. 4 show in San Jose, presumably at HP Pavilion, to the tour.

Q So I hear you're coming to San Jose.

A We are. We're so excited. . . . We didn't know whether people wanted the Spice Girls anymore. . . . There's been 3 1/2 million ticket requests, which has just been unbelievable. We've been completely blown away. The demand has been so great that we just decided to put in a few more shows.

Q Why come back now?

A For me, the main reason for doing this is I really want my children to see me up on stage being a Spice Girl. We want to celebrate the past. We sold 55 million albums, which is incredible. . . . And we never got the opportunity to really say thank you to our fans.

Q Will you be recording

A There will be a couple of new tracks on a greatest-hits album which will be out at the end of the year. . . . This is a one-off tour. After this there will be no more. We just want to thank everybody and finish it properly.

Q Are you looking to continue your solo career?

A No, not at all. . . . I loved my time with the Spice Girls, but I found that I love fashion. That's what I'm good at. . . . You know, I can sing, I can dance, but I'm not the best singer, I'm not the best dancer. So for me, I just wanted to do what was true to myself.

Q How do you like L.A. so far?

A I love the American attitude; it's very positive. I love the fact that everybody here seems very patriotic; I think that's a very strong positive message to send out for children. . . . There's so much for the kids to do. The weather's great. We are having such a wonderful time.

Q What did you think about the star-studded party Tom Cruise and Will Smith threw to welcome you?

A We couldn't believe that half of the people at the party even knew who we were. . . . We've been so gobsmacked, to be honest with you. We just see ourselves as two normal people from England. People obviously know who we are in Europe, but we had no idea that anybody really had any interest in us coming here or even really knew who we were. . . . We're still walking around with our jaws on the floor, really.

Contact Shay Quillen at squillen@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-2741. Read his columns and his music blog at www.mercurynews.com/shayquillen.