Tonight, the Beckhams will host 500 guests in the grounds of their Hertfordshire home for a celebration believed to cost at least £500,000. Of those, 350 will enjoy a five-course meal courtesy of Ramsay. The others have been invited to the reception beforehand, or to the after-dinner party.

After dinner, they will take part in a charity auction, hosted by Norton, where lots include a £1m necklace, designed by Victoria Beckham in conjunction with the jewellers Asprey.

Sarah Ferguson and her daughter Beatrice, Ewan McGregor, Elle Macpherson, Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, Rebekah Wade and Ross Kemp and the former Spice Girls Melanie Chisholm and Emma Bunton will join the England squad in getting out their cheque books.

Proceeds from the party will go to Unicef, the Prince's Trust and the Beckhams' own children's charity.

Wayne Rooney and Coleen McLoughlin are attending, along with the England team's new wonder boy Theo Walcott and his girlfriend Melanie Slade. But Sven Goran Eriksson will not attend.

Prince Charles and Camilla were invited, but declined as they have a party to mark 30 years of the Prince's Trust the previous evening. Other notable no-shows include Sir Elton John, his partner David Furnish and Liz Hurley, who have prior engagements in Cannes, and Tom Cruise.

The Full Length and Fabulousthemed party will be filmed and broadcast on ITV1. But a spokeswoman for the Beckhams denied that the presence of the cameras had deterred prospective guests.

"The RSVP is purely a return card, so unless people had specifically told David and Victoria, we wouldn't know, " she said. "Everybody who's coming has been spoken to by the people organising the party and have said 'Do you prefer not to be on camera?' and some people have taken that opportunity."