S8 EP5: Melanie C on Spiceworld, comparing muscles with Arnold Schwarzenegger and why she’ll always be a Spice Girl

In this episode, Louis speaks to singer, songwriter and Spice Girl Melanie C. Speaking ahead of the 30th anniversary of Wannabe, Melanie and Louis discuss deleted Spiceworld scenes, showing off her guns to Arnold Schwarzenegger and why there’s no such thing as a ‘former’ Spice Girl. Warnings: Strong language and adult themes. Links/Attachments: Song: Wannabe, Spice Girls (1996) https://open.spotify.com/track/1Je1IMUlBXcx1Fz0WE7oPT Song: I’m So Excited, The Pointer Sisters (1984) https://open.spotify.com/track/3moCFGH9twneH0SHMNeeCt TV Show: Friends – NBC (1994-2004) https://www.netflix.com/title/70153404 Song: Say You’ll Be There, Spice Girls (1996) https://open.spotify.com/track/1yTQ39my3MoNROlFw3RDNy Book: Who I Am, Mel C (2023) https://www.waterstones.com/book/who-i-am/melanie-c/9781802793383 Film: Spice World (1997) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120185/ Album: Sweat, Mel C (2026) https://open.spotify.com/album/2ZrlQz1UiDn1pCThyICAeD If you've been affected by the topics discussed in this episode, visit spotify.com/resources. Credits: Producer: Millie Chu  Researcher: Mark Maughan Audio Mixer: Tom Guest Video Mixer: Scott Edwards Assistant Producer: Maisie Williams Production Manager: Francesca Bassett  Music: Miguel D’Oliveira  Executive Producer: Arron Fellows     A Mindhouse Studios Production for Spotify  www.mindhouse.co.uk  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Hello there, it's me, Louis Theroux. Welcome to my podcast, the Louis Theroux Podcast.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  My guest today is singer-songwriter DJ Anne, perhaps most iconically Spice Girl, Melanie Chisholm, aka Mel C. Melanie was of course the high-kicking, back-flipping, tracksuit-wearing, sporty spice, making up one-fifth of the best-selling girl band in history. She was catapulted to stardom with the release of hit single Wanna Be in 1996, which reached number one in 37 countries.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  The Spice Girls became a symbol of girl power. I don't think they coined the term, but they became synonymous with it and popularised it. Also cool Britannia and general globe-conquering pop hegemony. But the band also faced intense media scrutiny, public backlash and various internal conflicts, some of which we lightly and gingerly touch upon in the chat. Melanie was, I think it's fair to say, and in fact I did say it, in our conversation, widely regarded as the best singer of the group. I don't think that's controversial. Who knows? And after the Spice Girls hiatus, she enjoyed a successful solo career with forays into

• 1:28Speaker 00

  pop, rock, R&B and more recently, house/dance with the release of her latest album Sweat. We recorded this conversation in mid-April this year at Spotify HQ. She turned up looking amazing, youthful, preternaturally, whatever that means. I mean, she just looked good. Did I look good, you're wondering? Not for me to say, but yes. A quick warning: this conversation contains some strong language, adult themes and discussion around eating disorders. All that, as well as much else besides, coming up.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  There's so many things I want to say to Louis, because my daughter's 17. And she's a cool kid. She knows all the stuff that's going on out there. And she's never impressed by anything I ever do. It's all a bit cringe. But you have managed to stay relevant.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Because she was very impressed I was speaking to you today.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Very pleased to hear that.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  I'm clinging on.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  So, there's so much to get into. I'm a little older than you, but...

• 2:48Speaker 01

  I bet it's not much, though. How old are you?

• 2:50Speaker 00

  I was born in 70.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  74? So you've got a few years on me. We'll have the same cultural references, I'm sure.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  And I was thinking about what a phenomenon The Spice Girls were. I was living in New York when Wanna Be came out. It was pointed out to me that it was 30 years ago, almost to the day, that Wanna Be dropped. Is that possible?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it came out July...

• 3:14Speaker 00

  June or July 96, anyway.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  July came out in 96, so yes, this summer is 30 years since Wanna Be dropped.

• 3:21Speaker 00

  I mean, The Spice Girls went on to become a phenomenon. There's much that could be said about that. But one of the most remarkable aspects of the whole journey was that launch, that moment of launch. That everything that epitomised The Spice Girls was encapsulated in the video and in the song.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Infectiously catchy, naughty, uptempo, disruptive.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Chaotic.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Chaotic.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Annoying.

• 3:49Speaker 00

  The Metro's John O'Brien said, "From its lyrical themes of female solidarity to its insanely catchy pop hooks and mischief making promo, the worldwide topper..." It was number one in how many countries?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  I think it was about 37.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  37.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  "Encapsulated everything that made the group so spellbinding in the space of just 2 minutes and 52 seconds." Someone else said, "It's hard to imagine any other pop act managing to make this much of an impact so quickly and effortlessly ever again."

• 4:18Speaker 01

  It was all of those things. And what is so brilliant about it was our collaborators on that particular song, Matt and Biff, who we went on to have so many-

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Matt Rowe and Biff Stannard.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  I don't know Biff. Uh, I feel like I know him. He's co-written with you a lot.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  I work with him. Every album I'm working on, I will do some sessions with him.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  Biff had worked with E17 a lot.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  He did. He did. And the way we met Richard, Biff Stannard, we did a showcase at a place called Nomis Studios, which was in Shepherd's Bush.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  This is another legendary moment in the sort of Spice story. This is late 95, I think.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  I think you're right. Yes. So we'd been auditioned in 94 and-

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Do you want to start at the beginning?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Should we start at the beginning? It's a very good place to start. So yes, so I went to performing arts college in 1990. I was 16. I grew up in a place called Widnes, which is, I would say, right in between Liverpool and Manchester. All of my family are from Liverpool. And moving from the North West, a very working class background, not much money to spare. So I was lucky in the fact I could qualify for a grant, which I won, and that enabled me to go to a performing arts college in Kent, sick up in Kent. And I was there for three years, completed my course, was going out doing auditions, but always had this longing to work in the music industry. And then one day I'm handed this flyer for a girl band.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  And yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  The advert said, "Wanted. Are you 18 to 23 with the ability to sing slash dance? Are you streetwise, outgoing, ambitious and dedicated?"

• 6:02Speaker 00

  They were putting together what they described as a singing, dancing, all female pop act for a recording deal.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  And so you went along to the audition. Remind me what you sang.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  So I sang I'm So Excited by the Pointer Sisters. And the reason I sang that was because my mum's also a singer. And this is, let's remember, this is back in the day. We didn't have, you know, any technology and we needed sheet music. And I, I didn't have any sheet music, but I knew my mum had some, so she actually posted it to me in London. Um, but yeah, that was one of the songs I knew, I knew it was in the right key for me. So that was a song that I sang.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  She couldn't have attached it as a PDF. We had emails, but we didn't really do that.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Did you have emails in nineteen ninety four?

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Did you not?

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Wow, no, I think I maybe, did I have a pager at that point? I think, yeah, that was my, my means of communication with people.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  It's like talking about carrier pigeons.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Isn't it? Yeah, and bathing in front of the fire and no cars.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  Like a horse drawn carriage downtown. It's like Dick Whittington. Crazy. Um, so it's, it's actually part of legend really that, um, and became part of your creation myth that having placed the ad, uh, Chris Herbert and Bob Herbert assembled the fabulous five, right? The five of you. He said that he was influenced, uh, partly by Friends. Do you know that? Not the, uh, Friends, the TV show.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, I haven't heard that before.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  Where he was like, oh, there's everyone likes someone on Friends. There's you like Monica or you like Phoebe or you like Joey. Um, and he wanted to do a sort of music version. Of course, in the background was Take That.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  That boy bands had become a big thing, drawing their inspiration from America, New Kids on the Block. There were also American R and B girl groups, SWV, En Vogue.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  TLC.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  TLC. So all of these influences, nevertheless, there wasn't a really hyper, I mean, Eternal, uh, were making music, but not in the mainstream pop space quite so much.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Well, we, when we got there, the first thing we did at the audition was we just had to dance. It was, you know, freestyle to a piece of music and it was Eternal Stay. And I was a big fan of the band at the time as well. Great song. I mean, they were the British girl bands. They were the, the ones doing it at the time.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  At times, yeah. But nevertheless. You were bringing something different to the table, the five of you.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  And, you know, it is incredible because there were a few lineup changes. I wasn't in the original five. When I first met the girls, it was Gerry, Melby, Victoria and Michelle. And there was a girl, I think she was called Melanie as well, another one before me.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  There was another called Melanie, three Melanies.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, we were all born in the seventies, it was a very popular name. And, and she'd gone and I stepped in and then, yeah, Michelle was like, the other four of us were so single minded and determined, this is what we wanted to do and we wanted to make it happen. But she was like, hmm, should I go to uni? I'm not sure. So that, that wouldn't cut it for us. And, yeah, and who knows, you know, how it would have all turned out. But I always say, when we were introduced to Emma, everything fell into place.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Emma Bunton.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yes, Baby Spice, our baby. Oh, I didn't finish what I was saying about wannabe because we've, we've backtracked a little. With Matt and Biff, they wanted to capture this energy, this chaos that was the Spice Girls.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Matt and Biff, Biff's down, we've done that, we entered up with it, they're on the stage, we've introduced them.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  But just to remind listeners, they turned up for your showcase in Shepherd's Bush. At a quite, I would say low ebb or it was a moment when you weren't sure things were moving quickly enough, right? You were still with your original management, you're like, when's it gonna happen? Come on.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Yes, the reason we had that showcase is because we were like really ambitious. We were, you know, we were naive, we admit that, but we, we just knew we had something really special. We hadn't written any music at this point. We were singing songs that they'd had written by a lot of middle aged men. The songs were shit, you know, we, we didn't even like the songs, but we just knew we had this energy. There was, there's this dynamic between us, which still exists to this day. You know, none of us are like musicians, you know, none of us play really, but we weren't like a band in that sense. You know, we, we could all sing, you know, we're not the greatest singers in the world, you know, people have got their opinions on that.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  But we could all sing, we could all dance, again, not the greatest dancers in the world. But we were all performers and we were all. Just this belief and this longing, you know, we wanted to be on stage, we wanted to be famous. You know, we wanted to travel the world, we wanted to sign autographs, all those things. As a young person, we'd all grown up having this fantasy. And so we'd found our people.

• 10:55Speaker 00

  Your people meaning each other.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Your little tribe. Were you living together at this point?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  We were.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  That was a Chris Herbert thing, I think, because later on he created and managed Five.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  And he put them in a house together. Um, what do you think that did?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  It was really important that time. You you don't know someone until you live with them. Right. That's when you really see them warts and all, isn't it? And it just got us to really know each other, really understand each other. And I think as a band, it's really important because when the schedule gets hectic and you're traveling around the world, you're away from your family, you become each other's family. So you need to be able to be in very close quarters. So that's, I think that's a bit of a genius move, really. And it was so fun, you know, as young people, it's great.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  He was smart about filming stuff too. He filmed a lot of behind the scenes content of you at the house. And it it still uh crackles with life and in and disinhibition and feelings of real realness, friendship. Um, arguments, but I saw a very relatable sense of it not just being a show business confection that, you know, notwithstanding that you were put together by a manager. It quickly catalyzed into the real thing, right? Real friendships.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Uh, real feuds, real fallings out, the whole bit. So you were saying, so then you do your showcase, um.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Well, we'd pushed him to do the showcase because it was moving too slow. And we were like, you know, we want to deal, we want to sign, we want to get there. And he was saying, just hold up a minute, you know. Don't run before you can walk. So we'd already decided we were gonna jump ship.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Really? Bail on the managers.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  You weren't on contract, nothing they can do about it.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  But get them, because we had no contacts in the music industry, you know, we didn't have a clue. So we got this showcase, we got them to pay for the showcase and organize everything and get the people down. Knowing we wanted to make the contact and then.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Slung your hook.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Cause we we knew we had something great, but that was confirmed for us when we saw these industry people go, hang on a minute, yeah, something here. And that's when we, I don't know how we did it. But somehow, maybe like Jerry's like so smart at these things, but we we got names, we got numbers, we chased up these people. I remember being in, so Jerry had a little Fiat Uno, that was like our little Spice Mobile, and it was battered, she'd had so many little knocks in it. And we were sitting outside BMG and she gone up to see Mark Fox.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  BMG, the label, the record label.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was, he was at publishing, but I think it was all in the same building at the time. So me and Mel were in the car. Those are the stories, and may maybe we'll not divulge on the podcast. And it's, Mel B always needs a wee, I'll leave it there. And Jerry went up to speak to Mark and from that moment, he took us under his wing. And I'm sure, and I know, he probably would have liked to have been part of the management. But he was very gracious, introduced us to lots of management, to a lot of the songwriters that were in the rooms. And we were kind of trying to find our way to Simon Fuller. That was the plan.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Were you called the Spice Girls at this point?

• 13:57Speaker 01

  We were called Spice.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  Spice. Before that, you'd been called?

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Touch.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Touch. Whose idea was Spice?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Spice was a Jerry idea. And me and Jerry were down at the gym, as we do often, in the evenings after rehearsing. And it just came to her. She was like, we're all different, like spices, you know, we have the flavours.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Flavours, plus five letters as well in the word, which helps.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  I mean, everything about the the the sort of, well, I'm trying not to call it packaging, because that sounds like you're a.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  A product.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  A product.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  But we kind of were.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  It's it's a funny thing, the Spice Girls, because, you know, obviously everyone's talking about it for thirty years. But so many people still refer to it as a manufactured band. And of course, in many ways it was. But the material that was being manufactured was really organic and authentic. That's maybe the secret that people miss. You know, they're like, well, what what is it? What is it that makes the Spice Girls so successful? The longevity of it, the legacy, is because it was real and it was marketed beautifully.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  Who came up with the names?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  It was Peter Lorraine, who was the editor of Top of the Pops magazine at the time, now a very successful music manager. We were at a lunch, this is all being reminded to me when I was doing research for the book, because a lot of this is like gone.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  Lost in the mists of your brain.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, we did so much in such a short space of time. It's really nice to see the other girls because we fill in the gaps for each other.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  Can I pivot, can I just pivot on that for a second? Because I made a couple of documentaries, not as a presenter but as an executive producer. One about boy bands called Boy Bands Forever, one about girl bands called Girl Bands Forever.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  And it was really striking how for a lot of the people involved, they're talking about a time in their life of such intensity when they were in their late teens, early twenties, that it's almost like talking to war vets who have been in a war.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  And it might have taken place over the course of two years. Like in the case of the heyday of the Spice Girls from wannabe in 96 to Jerry leaving in 98, was less than two years.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Insane.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Nothing.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 00

  And then for the next 20 or 30 years, these veterans of boy and girl bands are kind of figuring it out and thinking about what it meant and how in control was I? And was I exploited or was I exploiting? And who am I angry at? Does that resonate with you at all?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  It absolutely does. And I know I have this period of time, which I call integrating into society or integrating back into society. Because when you, if you're lucky enough to have that kind of success, your feet don't touch the ground. You're travelling across the globe, working, you know, sometimes seven days a week without a break. You're young, you're resilient, you can do it. But you are in fight or flight, living on adrenaline. So when Jerry left, that was obviously a really difficult time for us girls. We were two shows shy of finishing the European leg of the tour. Then we were going to America for three months.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  This was your first tour as well?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  This was our first tour.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Because you'd achieved all that success on the back of PAs and releasing music and videos, but not live events, not live touring.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  We'd done two shows in Istanbul. We'd done a collaboration with Pepsi. And this was, I think, what frustrated me as a pop star. I always wanted to perform. That is what drives me. When you become successful as a pop star, you spend most of your life doing all the other shit. You know, you, there's not much live performing that goes on. It was very much promo, promo, promo, promo, you know, product deals, adverts. And it's like, when do we get to do the day job, you know? So that was frustrating. But the first time we did it was on this huge stage in Istanbul. So it was Tara Fang, so I had two nights in Istanbul. And then, yeah, nineteen ninety-eight, we went out on the world tour. So we were managed by Simon.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  We left him before the tour started. But his thing was always, get two albums under your belt before you hit the road. Because obviously you need enough material to do a headline show. Yeah.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  In the book, you talk about, you've written a book about your experiences. It came out a year or two ago, I think, Who I Am. Your account of Jerry leaving in the book talks about you were making a video in the Mojave Desert for, remind me which song it is.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. So Say You'll Be There was the second video. And, yeah, and we shot that in the Mojave Desert. Probably the song that people went, ah, okay, there's more to them than one of it. It was a very important song.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  So what you've talked about is that there was a fallout over who had more screen time in the video.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I remember that. Well, it makes me laugh now and we do actually laugh about these things because back in the day, you know, we were young, we wanted equality. We spoke about equality quite a lot. But there was, yeah, a little bit of preference over certain girls. And, you know, we weren't happy about that. We were, there was no lead singer.

• 19:09Speaker 00

  Spell it out.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  You don't have to.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  No, people can read the book.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 00

  I couldn't figure it out because then I looked at the video and I was like, well, I can't tell who's getting more screen time.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  But it's very equal. It's very equal now. I think the first cut, the director had taken a shine to a particular member of the group. So it was they were very heavily featured.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  But that led to an argument which led to Jerry leaving.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  There's always more going on.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Young girls, there's so much going on and get five of them together and there's going to be clashes, you know, we were big. We're all big personalities in different ways.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  The the narrative is generally that um Mel B, Scary Spice, and Jerry, Ginger Spice, were the two big personalities.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  Um, then you got Victoria, Posh Spice, and Baby Spice, Emma, sort of, I guess, you know, not as vocal, and then you're the peacemaker. That was the phrase.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's true. Okay, so getting into the inner workings of the band, like any group of people, there's a dynamic. And what was difficult for us was that Melanie and Jerry were really great mates. But if they had a fallout, it would affect everybody. I think because they were both so outspoken and, you know, myself, Emma and Victoria didn't, you know, I didn't, I don't know, we didn't have as much airtime as as the two girls. I don't mean that in a thingy sense, I mean like just in it in the room. So that would cause issues sometimes, but I think.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  And Jerry saw herself as a bit of a co-manager.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  I think if it wasn't for Jerry and Melanie being the way that they are, we wouldn't have been as successful as we were. You know, Jerry is an incredible person to push things forward. You know, she's really smart, she's very creative. And, you know, she's a little bit older, she's a couple of years older than me, and.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  And she'd had some professional success because she'd been a TV presenter in Turkey.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  She'd definitely done more work. Melanie had worked as well as a dancer more than the rest of us. So they they had a bit more world experience as well. Were the leaders, they were, and to have two leaders is, you know, it's hard. Um, but Jerry definitely has that kind of, in some senses, you know, we feel like it's Jerry's band. Uh, you know, she often, I think maybe because she was the older one, she was a little bit more maternal as well. So, yeah, so sometimes that that could be tricky, especially when you're all becoming successful. You all have a profile in the public eye. Um, so, yeah, I think any band can kind of be a little bit shook by that. But we were, we were really good in a sense at self policing.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  It was tough sometimes because we were really hard on each other, not hard on each other in a mean way. But just like if someone's acting up a little bit, we'd just pull them back into the field. And, you know, at the time, you probably thought, for God's sake, but actually, it saved us in the long term. We are very proud that we remained friends, we've had our ups and downs. But no one's gone completely off the rails at any point, really.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Off the rails meaning off the reservation, do you mean? Like, off the rails implies like mental health emergency. Do you mean that or do you mean, um, no one's completely left?

• 22:37Speaker 01

  The womb.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  The womb. I mean, you know, Victoria is obviously the furthest within her own lane, in a sense, right? Given that she wasn't part of the last tour.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, and also she's the one who has gone, like you say, the furthest in career terms. She's gone in a completely different world. But, you know, it's funny, we we've kind of, I've not seen Melanie for a while, actually, since last summer. But, um, the other four of us, we were at Emma's, uh, birthday earlier this year. And it was kind of the most relaxed we've been in each other's company for a long time. And I think there's something about turning fifty that is, you know, you become so reflective, don't you? And really start to appreciate people in a different way.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a big, it's a big.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a big one.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Milestone is the term. Um, are the Spice Girls still together? That's what I was trying to figure out.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  We've never split up.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  That's what I'm saying, yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Jerry left. I would like to say she's back now, obviously, since we did the tour in twenty nineteen.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  But has Victoria left?

• 23:37Speaker 01

  No one's left.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  I love it. When people like do, when I'm doing shows and stuff and if people want to introduce me, when they say former Spice Girl, I'm really offended.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Because once a Spice Girl, always a Spice Girl. I think we all feel like that. There might be times we choose not to work in that arena, but we're still Spice Girl.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  Is it like the Rolling Stones where I think they, you know, get together for board meetings, right? Do you have kind of a summit at a regular interval?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  We don't have them often enough because it's still a business. You know, there are still things we have to take care of, you know? We have our trademark and we have lots of great merch out there. Of course, this year's a big anniversary and you know.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  Are you gonna do anything for the anniversary?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  We want to. Everything's in discussion, but it's a really positive time for us, you know.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  Would it be the five of you, do you think?

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Um, well, it depends what it is.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  Maybe a Wembley.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  That'd be nice, wouldn't it?

• 24:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. We'll see. There's nothing in the works, so it's obviously not going to be anything in time for the anniversary. But we are discussing lots of great opportunities. And it's just because it's so precious to us, it's hard to agree. And what everyone feels is the right thing, what they're comfortable with, how we want to approach it. So that's what the constant conversation is about.

• 24:57Speaker 00

  Did you have rules about who would stand in the middle?

• 25:00Speaker 01

  No, actually. With choreography, we'd swap. And like even when you look at the songs, so we really tried to play to each other's strengths. And we always knew, you know, if you're familiar with a lot of Spice Girls music, I would often sing them late. Emma would often sing verses. There was just like a natural, when we were writing songs with people, we'd kind of know who would work best in that area. You know, we had a few fallouts sometimes because someone was being overlooked a little bit. We tried to keep it equal. And, you know, I know there are lots of bands that have different setups, but even like with with publishing and everything we ever did, we split everything equally. Because another, you know, I praise Simon for that, because that's the only way to keep a band together.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Simon, who gave you that advice?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, you have to be equals in the business, right?

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Uh, it's generally acknowledged that you had the best voice.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  I think that's down to personal taste, isn't it? It it's said a lot. And of course, it's a compliment. So thank you. Thank you, people. Sometimes I say I was just a show off. He used to do the high bits at the end. And everyone can sing, you know, obviously, there's there was different levels of of ability. But there's there's no one who cannot sing. Everybody brings something.

• 26:16Speaker 00

  You were the best.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  According to you and lots of other people.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  No, it it depends what you like.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  I'm just being mischievous, but people did say you were the best and you were. Um, I I'm possibly over researched, like I I always like to be prepared.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 26:35Speaker 00

  Um, I've so I've read your book. I've listened to your music. I've gone back and I watched Spice World, which I'd never seen before.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Really? Did you enjoy it?

• 26:44Speaker 00

  I really enjoyed it.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 26:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  It's like a panto. It's like a Christmas panto sketches, broad comedy cameo after cameo. Roger Moore, Richard E. Grant, Michael Barrymore. Gary Glitter, he's been cut out of it. Did you know that while you were there?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  While the movie was getting edited, you were like, oh, shit, he's got to go.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  There's a scene where you sing Wanna Be In My Gang, which is a banger. The devil has the best tunes.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Separate the man from the music.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, well, it was again before we knew. That shit, but.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  You can find that on YouTube. You can find the outtakes. Why would you want to with Gary Glitter on YouTube?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Can you? Wow, I never knew that.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  Speaking of somebody who made a documentary about Jimmy Savile, for those who don't know, Gary Glitter was unmasked as a paedophile. Um, and it was a reminder watching the outtakes that, oh, we thought he was harmless, partly because he was already sending himself up. It's like the what? Oh, he's so ridiculous.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  He's such a cartoon. He doesn't take himself seriously, therefore he's safe. And turned out that was the disguise.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  But it's funny when you're in the presence of those people, you do feel. Oh, something's a bit.

• 27:59Speaker 00

  Did you feel a little something?

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Well, I met Jimmy as well.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  Did you?

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did one of the breakfast shows, whether it was GM TV, wherever it was called at the time. And now I was on the sofa next to him and I was in the lift with him and I I did, he made me feel very uncomfortable. I think he was even a little bit, I mean, he was, he was quite old at the time, but I think he was almost a little bit inappropriate on the air. You know?

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Really? What, when you were there?

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he was just, well, he was him. Let's not give him any airtime. So, back to the question. Wannabe, the song.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  That wasn't.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  And the video. No, because it's important, because it, because it's about Spice World as well. This.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Have you commandeered? You've taken over the controls.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Do you not like that?

• 28:44Speaker 00

  We were talking about Spice World.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Yes. So Spice World.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  In which the villain Barry Humphries.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Plays a kind of Rupert Murdoch-like Australian news bear and he's like, I've, I've gotta get those Spice Girls on me if it kills me. That's not an exact uh impression. And the main through line for the film is that there's this antagonist reporter slash vampire who's coming to try and find dirt on you.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, the movie, it was, what was going on? You know, obviously a comedic version in the film, but that was really how we were. That was our experiences. You know, we'd been out there, we'd been promoting for a year when we sat down and the, and the movie was being written. So a lot of those experiences that are the through line of the movie were the things that we were experiencing.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  I'm sure, and I'm sure that's partly why it works.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  And it was a big hit.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  It was a big hit and it's not on any streaming services currently.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  I wanted to watch it and I did watch it, but I, it was quite a job.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Did you watch it on VHS?

• 29:51Speaker 00

  I think we found a cheeky.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Oh, did you?

• 29:54Speaker 00

  Download somewhere, but it was, it's not available on any streaming service.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  At the moment, it will be, um, because there was a lot of people that owned it. It was kind of all over the place. Um, so we, we've had to come together. The Spice Girls now fully own it, so we are, yeah, we will be presenting it at some point. And hopefully they're not too distant futures for people to enjoy.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  So, just from the off, like I said, you took off like a rocket. You conquered not just the UK, but you smashed America. Nevertheless, it wasn't to everyone's tastes. This will surprise you. There were some music people, industry personnel or artists who didn't like the Spice Girls and felt it incumbent to push back and give statements.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Who've you got?

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Bear with me. Tom York-

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Go on. Oh, Tom York, yeah, Radiohead, yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Said-

• 31:10Speaker 01

  I can't remember.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Tom York from Radiohead said you were the Antichrist. Not you personally, but the Spice Girls collectively.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  That's a bit strong, isn't it? I love Radiohead.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Shirley, wait, but if you-

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Shirley Manson's from Garbage.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Wait for this one.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  I think she's actually kind of spoken about this, not, maybe recently or kind of, you know-

• 31:32Speaker 00

  It's not a good look now.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's acknowledged with hindsight.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  It feels like a massive overreaction.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  In hindsight, you're like, okay, right. So if you think that about Spice Girls, what do you think about, you know, Hitler? Shirley Manson from Garbage said, "I want them tarred and feathered. My wish is for the complete and utter destruction of the Spice Girls."

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Liam Gallagher said, if he bumped into the Spice Girls, he said, "I'd chin 'em."

• 32:04Speaker 01

  You've got to love the 90s, hey?

• 32:05Speaker 00

  Funny that that was the level of anger.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  But I think, what does that, I think that speaks to mainly how big and impregnable you appeared. It was like, no, that's, it's conquering everything and someone needs to fight back.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was more, it was, we were probably, you know, everything they hated. You know, because of, we were the most commercial band probably ever. You know, we had so many sponsorship deals and we, you know, we were making this shiny pop music. So, yeah, it was just a reaction to them. Like, literally, it wasn't their taste. They hated it and it becoming successful.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  It was unavoidable.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, you know-

• 32:43Speaker 00

  And that first album sold 23 million copies. It's the highest selling album by a girl band of all time.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  That's amazing, isn't it? And the thing is, that'll probably never change now because the industry's a different place.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  It's not about album sales, that's a sort of meaningless metric now.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Early on, you, you, you had an incident which you talk about at the ninety six Brit Awards where the because you were just now talking about policing each other and there was a moment where you were policed by the bandmates. They felt, and it sounds so trivial, you know, looked at in dispassionately, but you'd taken your hair out.

• 33:21Speaker 00

  So you no longer had a ponytail and this was before you even had released any music, but you were at the Brits. So you were under scrutiny and your fellow bandmates thought, what are you doing? You're fucking with the look, the look of the band. We've all got certain hair that we have. And they criticised you and you told one of them to fuck off and then the next day they all kind of, in your telling anyway, came on very heavy. So telling you that that was, you out of line, your behaviour was disgusting. You know, it's in the telling, it's like not much of an anecdote, but I mention it because you identify as a moment where you clammed up a bit, like you felt, you no longer felt you were completely able to.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  I, I went into terror because I thought I was gonna lose everything. You know, those dreams as a child, which now were a possibility. I might have fucked it all up.

• 34:13Speaker 00

  Because you thought you might be thrown out.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  And I thought it was very trivial as well because, okay, to put some more meat on the bones of that evening. So it was the Brit Awards in nineteen ninety six, so which fall around February time. So we hadn't released anything. Nobody in the public knew us, but in the industry, you know, people had started talking. And we were there, Santa Virgin Records, and we were sitting on a table with Lenny Kravitz. Which obviously, you know, we were these young girls, this was an amazing night. We had a great night, we had a few champagnes, we were really, you know, it was the Brits in the nineties, right? Everyone was having fun. Yeah, and we were just leaving and we were like going to, to find our car and whatever the the situation was, where I just turned around and said to Victor, oh, fuck off. Um, unbeknownst to me, go home, go to bed, wake up the next morning and I was in a lot of trouble and it was.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  I was living with Mel B at the time, uh, we were living in Watford and Gerry also lived in Watford and they were both there when I got up. And, yeah, they, they were just disgusted with my behaviour.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  That was the word that was used, we're disgusted.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  It's a strong word.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, because, you know, you know, when you've had a night out and you wake up in the morning and you've got like beer for it, right? You think, oh, fuck, I don't know what to do last night. I didn't even have that. I just woke up going, oh, that's, last night was fun. Well, I had completely brushed off that situation. But obviously it had really affected people in a way I hadn't realised. So I was in trouble. And then Simon wanted to speak to me and I was told in no uncertain terms, if anything ever happened like that again, I would be gone. So that, yeah, I just, that completely freaked me out. One, because I didn't realise I'd done anything that terribly bad.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  And two, because my actions may have led to me losing everything I'd ever wanted, you know? Um, so it affected me, you know, a lot.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Are you still, are you still in business with Simon Fuller?

• 36:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Simon Fuller's like the doppelganger, not physically, but kind of professionally of Simon Cowell.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  They're very, very different people.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  They're very different, but they're put together a lot. They're both vastly wealthy, super successful.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think they created Pop Idol together.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  They fell out over Pop Idol, I think. Uh, but Simon Cowell's the public one and Simon Fuller's the private one. Simon Fuller almost never gives interviews.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Um.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Hi, Simon, if you're watching.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  Hi, Simon. Apparently, Simon, your management style appeared to be divide and rule.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Yes, at the time, yes. He would, he would admit that.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Do you think so?

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, he would admit that. And the thing is, you know, you have to remember, this is a very long time ago. He was, I think, only in his thirties, which obviously is an adult. But none of this had ever happened to anybody involved. You know, The Spice Girls was unprecedented.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  What was his track record at that point?

• 37:09Speaker 01

  He managed Annie Lennox.

• 37:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Which was one of, yeah, one of, amongst other artists, Paul Hardcastle. His business was called Nineteen.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  Because he, because of Paul Hardcastle's song, Na Na Na Na Nineteen?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Exactly. So, yeah, that kind of set him on the road. I think he started in A and R and then he moved to management. And, yeah, he was managing lots of various acts. He managed Amy Winehouse for a short period of time.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Full of it.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  I think, yeah. Then after The Spice Girls, he went on to do S Club Seven. But The Spice Girls was this crazy entity and I think the label, the management, everyone was a bit like, fuck, what do we do? What do we do with it? And everyone was terrified of us kind of imploding. Because we were, we were so volatile. We just were. We, it's, that is The Spice Girls. We love each other. But when there's a fallout, it's catastrophic, you know. So I think everyone was just trying to keep it going. But it was the, it was the wrong thing to do.

• 38:06Speaker 00

  What should he have done?

• 38:08Speaker 01

  I think supported our togetherness and our friendship because when we are on the same page, we're unstoppable. That is the only way The Spice Girls works. But sometimes I think, and this, you'll know this, right, historically, through music. When they're infiltrated, when an act or an artist is infiltrated from an outside influence, then it goes to shit. You know, our, our power is in our unity.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  It always was and it still is. But I think that was always his, I, I believe that was his thought process. Keep them separate, keep them all, because he'd tell us like different things to each other and it just caused a little bit of unrest and, yeah, I do believe it was his way of trying to keep control of the beast. And but it backfired on him and we left him.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  Uh, you say of that time, I started to consciously make myself smaller. My confidence began to be stripped away and it happened so quickly.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Hmm. It is difficult.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  You you you earlier, you know, talked about other girl and boy bands and their stories. And it is bizarre because your life completely changes. It's unrecognisable and the media at that time were brutal, the tabloid media, especially here in the UK. And we were, you know, when you're young, you're naive, you don't think about the negatives. I didn't think about the negatives. I was just like, we're making music, we're having fun, everybody's gonna love us. And then it was like, oh shit, that's not, that's not life, that's not real life. So you're dealing with all of these opinions of you that you weren't ready for and.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  It's before social media.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  And it's sort of before the internet was the internet.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:02Speaker 00

  So it's mainly tabloids, is it? Can you, is it easier to tune that out? At least it's not on your phone, right?

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Well.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  How are you seeing?

• 40:10Speaker 01

  See, I would disagree. I think because at the time as well, I personally, I was obsessed. I was obsessed with what everyone was saying about me. So I'd, I'd go to the gym every morning. The first thing I'd do would go to the newsstand and look in the, you know, the gossip columns or the, you know, the the entertainment, whatever in the, in the newspapers, yeah. And I'd just check. And the other thing was, we were told that anything we ever did would get found out. So we were always living in fear. So if we'd ever gone out and had a drunken night or whatever, or, you know, met somebody, you were just like, when's it gonna be in the paper? Because you knew it was gonna come out, because we just knew that was just the way it was. Now we know why and how.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  Go on.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  But at the time.

• 40:53Speaker 00

  Now we know why.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Because our phones were, you know, being hacked. And I've done the case, I've been through the whole thing. It started in nineteen ninety six, it ended in two thousand and nine. So wannabe came out in nineteen ninety six and I had my daughter in two thousand and nine. So myself and every other person in the public eye in the United Kingdom was, you know, was being listened to throughout that period.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  Do you know who was hacking your phone?

• 41:22Speaker 01

  I think it was a number of people. It was more than one publication. News of the world. The one that I've been to court with is at the Sun and News of the World, yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  What about the mirror?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Um, those proceedings have come to a halt.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Why?

• 41:39Speaker 01

  I think it's just been too long. I was never notified. People were notified by the police. Um, and I never got, I never got that call. So I just left it. And I think as well.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  Do you think Piers Morgan was involved?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Um, I wouldn't like to say.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  You're good at your job and I'm good at mine.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  Would you, uh, hold it against, if it was true of Piers Morgan, let's say, would, would you like be interviewed by him? Like, you, you're like.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  No. I, I, I, I've met Piers. I, I'm not a fan. I'd choose to not have an interview with him. Yeah.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  Because of that period?

• 42:23Speaker 01

  I, when I was young with the Spice Girls, part of the process of becoming a successful band is to speaking to lots and lots of journalists. And at the time, you know, in many ways, the tabloids broke us, you know, and, and we, we did have this thing.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Do you mean in a positive way?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Well, in both ways. Um, but yeah, they, they were very important at the time. Like you say, we didn't have social media. Now, which is a wonderful thing. Well, they've lost so much of their power because we do have social media. But I don't need to speak to tabloids. I don't want to. It doesn't sell records and, you know, I've, I've learnt my lessons.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  Presenting the counter narrative, it would be, well, it was a tango and that there was a sort of somewhat symbiotic dimension to it.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  I learnt quite quickly that I'm not comfortable with that aspect of fame. You know, this whole like, you belong to the tabloids or you belong to the media. Um, you know, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. I, I wanna make music. I wanna be on stage. I wanna perform. I don't wanna be in the newspaper. Do you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, it's gonna sell records. It's important. If I'm promoting things, then I realise I have to toe the line to a point. But I'm not, I've never wanted to, you know, fuck me, I'm one of the Spice Girls, right? One of the most written bands in history. I've never felt the need to exploit myself to that point because I feel like you're dancing with the devil, right? It's. For me, I never felt comfortable with that and and I feel really grateful because I've

• 43:57Speaker 01

  had my issues with the tabloids, but I don't think I've ever given them enough that I owe them.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  Is was there a um, you know, with with some of these girl bands, there's a there's a specially painful moment like Lee from Blue famously said something about nine eleven right after the planes had gone into the World Trade Center. Do you remember that?

• 44:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  He said something along the lines of, yeah, but a lot of whales being killed as well, and no one talks about that, something like that.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Gosh, eek.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Which obviously he didn't mean it vindictively, but it was uh.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Well, you know, we all say things sometimes, don't we?

• 44:35Speaker 00

  And famously, Brian Harvey, he says he takes nineteen E's on a night or something. I shouldn't joke about it. Be serious. Come on.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  The thing you say that kind of, yeah, before cancel cancel culture was a thing.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Well, it turns out it was a cancel culture even then, but they didn't call it that. And he was cancelled for saying on a night out, he likes to take, I don't know what the number was, it was more than your recommended daily allowance.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  What's the recommended daily?

• 45:02Speaker 00

  I think you're like, I think one a week is considered.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  One and a half.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  Maybe one a week sounds like too much. Once every few months, if you're a pop star. But the prescription can change, varied on your level of success and your tolerances. Uh, did you have a Spice Girls? This is this is a really low road question. Even as I'm saying, but was there, it felt like you didn't have a moment of scandal like that, right? It wasn't as though one of you once said, um, I'm in favor of public execution or something. I mean, Jerry said she liked Margaret Thatcher.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was the one that sprung to my mind. So obviously, again, being young and being thrown to the lions, as we were, um, you know, we didn't have media training, which, I mean, I'm sure, obviously, a lot of listeners would be like, what the hell's that?

• 45:48Speaker 00

  Compared to saying I like to take nineteen E's in a night, saying you like Margaret Thatcher, and she she said she was the original Spice Girl and she had girl power. Didn't she say that, something like that?

• 45:57Speaker 01

  She she did say that. So we were interviewed by Spectator. What the actual fuck.

• 46:03Speaker 00

  Spectator magazine, really.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  I didn't even know what Spectator was.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  It's a, it's a right-leaning, um, political magazine, yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  So why are a pop band being, why?

• 46:13Speaker 00

  Who set that up?

• 46:14Speaker 01

  What the fuck?

• 46:15Speaker 00

  Simon, was that one of Simon's brainwaves?

• 46:17Speaker 01

  I think it probably was. But, you know, obviously, we were five very different individuals with different experiences growing up, predominantly working class, but, you know, there's predominantly left-leaning. But obviously, Margaret Thatcher, she was a, you know, even saying the name kind of fills me with dread. She was a, you know, was she the first female Prime Minister?

• 46:39Speaker 00

  First female Prime Minister, yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  She did what she did, and, you know, and, and Gerry applauded that and her being female. And those, you know, the Girl Power references were there for that reason. I grew up in the northwest of England. My whole family are from Liverpool. My, on my dad's side of the family, the men have worked on the docks, or they did work on the docks for generations. Obviously, that was very difficult for me because that was not my opinion. I think that was one of the things that was hard about the Spice Girls is that we could get tarred with the same brush. If somebody had an opinion, a political opinion, everyone would think that's what everybody thought and felt. And it wasn't the case.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, people know that now, but being a young girl going back to Liverpool after it's like, oh, the Spice Girls have said this. It's just like, shit, I didn't say it, I don't think it.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  You did an interview with Oprah. I mean, I've already said this, but just a reminder that, like, the Spice Girls cracked America wide open, which for a UK, uh, girl group or boy group was, I want to say, if not unprecedented, then highly unusual and certainly unprecedented in the scale of domination that you kind of achieved. So you're on Oprah and you say that the next day you looked at yourself in the mirror while on the treadmill and you said, you've just got to be a robot, no feelings, no excuses, no pain, you're a robot.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  That was a little mantra that I had and that kind of you you touched on a couple of things like the catalysts that led to that point. So obviously being criticised about my appearance. By who? Well, the first person, the first like little thing that cut deep was when Chick. Chick Murphy. The original backer, financial backer of the band had commented on my thighs when doing a backflip and that hurt. And I was like, oh, fuck, okay, I need to lose weight. And then really being scrutinised by other people, tablo media predominantly, but also by myself, you know, you're in photo shoots, you're you're image, you're looking at your

• 48:58Speaker 01

  image constantly. And I think as well, I had like a lot of guilt for my success and I I don't know why, but I kind of didn't feel worthy for it. And and I think I talk about this in the book as well. It's like, you know, I did grow up in an environment where people work really hard and can have very physical, difficult jobs. And I was starting to earn money that they would never see in a lifetime. And, you know, I had guilt about that. And so I was like, I have to be to be worthy of this success. I have to be perfect.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  I have to be the absolute best version of myself. And yeah, I became really insular and I was controlling what I was eating. I was exercising obsessively. I was really kind of withdrawing from the band as well because I was really embarrassed about it. I knew I had an eating disorder, but I wouldn't acknowledge it. I wouldn't. I was I was kind of in denial. There was like a little voice, but I quietened that voice constantly. And that so that was the thing, you're a robot. Because I I loved, and I love being a Spice Girl so much, and I love performing. And this was all of my dreams come true. Talking to Oprah Winfrey, we were performing at Madison Square Garden, we were flying to Tokyo.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  It was mind blowing. And I could not fuck it up because I nearly did at one point. So just all of these little things like came together and just made me like, you know, very, very guarded.

• 50:41Speaker 00

  It's a lot, isn't it? I interviewed Jade from Little Mix for the podcast and her her observation was that it gets harder as you get more successful. Like it's when you it's almost like on the way up, it's a bit more straightforward. And then when you're actually

• 50:54Speaker 01

  And it's more fun.

• 50:55Speaker 00

  And when you're when you've reached the top of the mountain, for some reason

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, pressure, responsibilities.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Sense of impending failure, like obsolescence, like how do we like this, I've got to maintain it now. And how do you, how do you maintain that level of success?

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it's funny because I kind of just want to reflect on my personal experience of being a Spice Girl. And at the time, I didn't ever really feel like the most popular one, you know, I feel like I was, I was treated quite, they were quite mean to me in the media. And there was obviously doing the, the phone hacking stuff. I had to go through all of the articles that were written about me and the narrative around me was, you know, I, I, I suffered after my like time with the Spice Girls in that Spice many a days and into my solo career. So it was probably after I toured my first solo record, I had a very difficult time. I, you know, I had a lot of demons I had to face.

• 51:56Speaker 00

  What year are we talking?

• 51:57Speaker 01

  So this was millennium.

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Are we talking about your eating disorder?

• 52:01Speaker 01

  So eating disorder, and I was diagnosed with depression, you know, suffering with anxiety. It was hard to leave the house. It was, it was a really, really dark time. So I, I went over to LA and I did a three month stint there writing and recording my first solo record. It was the first time I'd stepped away from the band. I'd allowed myself to admit I had a problem and I had to do something about it. So that was the first time I sought help and was trying to deal with my eating disorders and my addiction to exercise. I was just trying to get some kind of balance in my life, but still controlling everything. And that worked to a point, having someone to cook all of my meals, to have a personal trainer.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  So I was literally giving other people the responsibility. I couldn't have those responsibilities.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  You, who, did you have a manager at this time?

• 52:53Speaker 01

  I did. So when we left Simon Fuller, I think it was in ninety eight, we then had a manager, um Nancy Phillips, was someone I stayed with for eighteen years.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  And she was Spice Girls, but also you individually?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yes, all of us individually for the first record. Obviously Gerry had already gone. Gerry left under her watch. And then, yeah, we all released a solo album and then I continued to stay with her.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  Individually released solo records?

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so all the Spice Girls have released a solo record.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  That must have been weird when you're all thinking like, I wonder how their one is doing.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is hard because, you know, you wanna be supportive, but you also feel competitive. Um, so that was all going on, but I was, you know, trying to figure shit out for myself. And then it, once I wasn't in that environment where I had all of the things in place. From being, you know, I, I was anorexic for sure. I mean, I wasn't starving myself. But I was really restricting my eating and over exercising. I was underweight. But then my body just took over and I started binging, sometimes uncontrollably to the point where I would become conscious kind of mid binge and just think like, what the hell am I doing? Yeah, and it was petrifying and I'd always been.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  At night?

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, at night I'd wake up and I'd, I'd, I'd just be like, I just want carbs. And I, I, I went on to learn that a lot of this are the symptoms of, of depression. Waking up early hours of the morning, going to the kitchen, like self-soothing like with carbs to the point of like, you know, being able to sleep again. And of course, my appearance was changing. And that was my biggest fear because I knew, I knew it was gonna be commented on, you know, I knew that the tabloids were gonna be really, really mean about it. And I was so embarrassed and I was so ashamed because I prided myself on my control and on my determination. And I'd created this, the perfection or as close to the perfection. As I could possibly get to be worthy of this pop stardom.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  And then I was losing it. I was losing grip of of this control. But it was my body reacting going, I can't continue in this way. You know, I'm so grateful that my body kind of saved me in a sense. So it was around two thousand when I was like crying constantly, struggling to get out of bed. I was still promoting and touring my first album. I was becoming more and more uncomfortable, you know, gaining more and more weight. And that's when I first went to my G P and that's when he said to me, well, first of all, we need to address your depression. And I just, that felt like a weight lifted up, like physically a weight lifted off my shoulders because

• 55:35Speaker 01

  it had a name, you know, I knew it was something I could be helped with. And that was the start on the road to recovery.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  I mean, sometimes depression comes from nowhere, right? It's just like catching any other disease. And sometimes it's related to things that you're going through.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:50Speaker 00

  You had gone through this extraordinary passage of your life, right?

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  In which you'd been in control but out of control, enormous success but enormous pressure.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  It's hard to believe that didn't have some role in what you were going through, right?

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, you know, I think all of us Spice Girls have had things we've had to deal with because it's not normal. It's not, and even people now when I'm working with them, they're like, your life's just not normal. Just the the way you work, you know, the expectation of a performer. You get up on stage in front of tens of thousands of people and then you go home and empty the dishwasher and it's a massive head fuck. You know, but that's that's life and I've kind of, I have more of a handle on it now because I've done it for such a long time. But then it was the extreme because it was Spice Girls fame and then being on my own. And I think a lot of the control issues were because my life was in the hands of other people.

• 56:48Speaker 01

  So it was the only things I could control was my appearance, what I ate, how much I exercised. And also my gym was like my hideaway because I I hate confrontation. And you know, there was times in the band where it was very confrontational. People had different personalities in that respect. So if I was in the gym, I got left alone. So I would spend more and more time in the gym. It was my safe place. And yeah, and this is where I talk about the reintegration into society. Because those spy years, like ninety six to ninety eight, we hardly were in public. You know, we were in a bubble. We had security. You're you're on a plane. You're on a private jet. You know, you're on stage or you're you're not you're not living like a normal human being.

• 57:30Speaker 00

  You had a flat in Finchley, did you?

• 57:32Speaker 01

  I did.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  But you probably weren't there that much.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Not really.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Were you able to date?

• 57:38Speaker 01

  That's that's another hot topic, isn't it? Um, I I would have liked to have dated. I had a dry spell. That's what we call it. No, I I think it was in the band.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Because Robbie talks about how Nigel Martin Smith, the Take That, Robbie Williams of Take That. Talks a lot about Nigel Martin Smith sort of policed their, um, he didn't want girlfriends. That's Nigel denies that, but Robbie says that Nigel stopped them from getting any action.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Or at least.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  I think he's made up for it, don't you?

• 58:10Speaker 00

  I didn't realise you'd had a thing with Robbie.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, it it was a million years ago and lasted two seconds. Um, oh, God, that sounds really bad. Oh, well.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  He was a mess. I was a mess. It broke my heart. That was your quote.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:24Speaker 00

  And Jay from Five.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, lovely Jay. He, I've not spoken to him for a while actually, but he's an ex I remain friends with. I don't remain friends with many exes, but he's a lovely boy. And I saw Robbie recently. I mean, God, we were kids. Do you know what I mean? It's like we're talking like, you know, twenty odd years ago. Um, nearly thirty years ago is a long time. But, um, no, but I think a lot of managers, they did that, you know, you weren't allowed to come out if you were in a boy band. Probably or a girl band, um, because you had to remain. Available to the fans. That was the thing, wasn't it?

• 58:55Speaker 00

  Did you have boys outside the hotels?

• 58:58Speaker 01

  It's completely different. Yeah, we didn't have, I mean, don't get me wrong. Other people had a better success rate than I did, but it wasn't that kind of, you know, like historically with like boy bands or rock bands, it's like, oh, you know.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  Pick him out of the crowd.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 00

  We've got a special guy and he picks them out and says, do you want to meet the band and?

• 59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, our gigs weren't like that.

• 59:19Speaker 00

  No.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  They were full of young girls and gays. Which are the best audience.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  You just don't get any action. Um, but you know, that that wasn't, you know, I was, it was quite lonely for me at times. I think there was many times in the band when we were working together, where I was the only one without a partner. So, yeah, that's been quite a big theme of my adult life, really. Um, it was a long time before I was in a long term relationship. Yeah.

• 59:50Speaker 00

  So was that part of what led to the depression? I guess that's where we were going.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I think it was very environmental. It was the experiences that I'd had. And yeah, just, just getting to that point where, yeah, I, I couldn't continue living the way I was living. Um, and, and that was a really long road back to, to health. And I never really stopped. It was a different time as well, because I probably, I think I would have benefited to go off and have some time to heal, but I was still, I was touring and promoting and.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  Your solo stuff.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  Uh, let's talk about your solo music.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  One of the pleasures prepping this interview was realising how good it is. And also that the recent stuff's really strong.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  I think you've sort of found your, your mode, especially with like the last album and then this new material. I haven't heard all the new album. It's called Sweat, but that kind of, I mean, how would you describe the music?

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Well, I started DJing about eight years ago and I play house music, like multi-genre house, but as an artist, obviously, I'm a pop artist, but I wanted to bring those worlds closer together. And also, it's just brought so much joy to my life, being out there DJing as well as singing live, that I wanted to reflect that

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  in the music. So I've just had loads of fun and tried to to make, and you're right, I I feel like

• 1:01:15Speaker 00

  Is there a genre, put a label on it?

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Um, well, it's electronic pop dance, I suppose.

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  With a bit of disco?

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Bit of disco in there, definitely.

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  It feels like the single, what's the single called?

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  So we've got Sweat.

• 1:01:29Speaker 00

  Sweat, where it's it's taking a bit of Diana Ross.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  And some Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Yes. So

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  Explain that.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Okay, so let's, whenever I make music, it's a reflection of what's been going on in my life over the period of time that I'm making the record, right? And this is interesting, this album, because I was fresh from a long-term relationship breaking up. So I was in like the, you know, the untangling of all the things, the bitterness, the anger.

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  Is this the father of your daughter?

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  No, no, no, that's, that was, that was, that was twenty twelve, yeah, that was way back. And so this was the the one after that. And that was all falling apart, untangling, getting nasty, bitterness. It's great inspiration for music.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  How do you know when a relationship's not working?

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  I think when you're not happy anymore, when the icks are too big to ignore.

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  Icks are part of a long-term relationship.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Um, no, just, you know, just just getting to the point where you just think, this is too much like hard work.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  Mm.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  You know, there's there's no joy here. Um, so that is reflected in the music. But then I met somebody new and I fell in love and I'm like

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  So I I had this like beautiful breadth of of human emotion, right, that I was able to draw upon. And so I had this great body of work, working with incredible songwriters, producers, I really Really knew what I wanted to achieve, really have such a good dance feel and pulling from different genres of dance as well, you know, because I know I can't go like super specialist in any direction. I'm a pop artist. I write pop songs, but it's just having those flavours and making it feel more like the music I wanna play and dance to in a club. So Sweat, just to finally answer your question about Arnie. It was a moment, I was really happy with the work I had for the record and I wanted to have some fun.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  I'd been working on a playlist, a fitness playlist and that, reach two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, Diana Ross, work that body.

• 1:03:40Speaker 00

  Great, by the way.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Thank you. I was really eager to get that into a tune. I thought I wanna make like a fitness banger. I wanna have loads of fun. So I was looking at all these insbos through my life as a kid, I grew up on, the kids from Fame, Flashdance, I was thinking about Olivia Newton-John, Let's Get Physical. And so we had this hook from the Diana Ross track. And looking at all these insbos and I just remembered, I was on this fitness camp once and they played, so Arnold Schwarzenegger, Around the Pumping Guy in Time. He made these albums where it's like bangers, like It's Raining Men, but he's like literally doing the workout over it, like it's bicep curls.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  And so we were looking at that and just having loads of fun. And I was like, it's time to bring the fun to this record. And Sweat was made and it felt like the perfect introduction to this body of work. He did compliment my guns once.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Did he?

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  It's one of my claims of fame, yeah.

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  What was the location?

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  I was at the Royal Albert Hall and it was Gorbachev's eightieth birthday celebrations.

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  Wow, what a double name drop.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  We didn't go anywhere near those. Can you imagine the ridiculous, I mean, you know, I know you've had some of those moments too, but ridiculous rooms you find yourself in.

• 1:04:56Speaker 00

  Right, right, right, when you're suddenly, I don't think I've rubbed shoulders with either Arnie or Gorbachev. Did you meet Gorbachev?

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  I didn't actually. I was asked to perform, I think, um, one of his, his daughter, his wife, somebody was a big fan. So I was asked to perform at his birthday.

• 1:05:13Speaker 00

  The Spice Girls encounter with Nelson Mandela, obviously is legendary. Do you remember what he said?

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  He said it was the best day of his life, meeting the Spice Girls. Yeah.

• 1:05:24Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  I mean, almost.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  I don't think he really meant it.

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  Almost too much.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  You know, let's not overdo it.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, do you think he meant it?

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  Not freedom of your country or be released from prison.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was such a beautiful moment. Obviously, I mean, what an honour to to have met the man. We, whenever Spice Girls did those things, because I think, you know, people will will remember the photographs with Charles when he was Prince. You know, the the bottom pinch and the lipstick marks and all of those things and it was.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Well, help people, the younger crowd might not know.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  Set the scene.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Well, I think it was about nineteen ninety seven and the Spice Girls were performing at a Prince's Trust concert. I have a feeling we were in Manchester and there's always a royal line up at these things for all of the artists performing on the show. And you get given the protocol, like when you meet a member of the royal family. You wait to be spoken to, you wait, you don't take their hand, you wait for them to offer their hand to you. With the Queen, you used to curtsey and there's all of this stuff, but obviously being the Spice Girls, we always thought it was very funny to do what we were told not to do. And Gerry thought she'd give him a little pat on the bum and kiss him with, she'd put so much red lipstick on. And, you know, those photographs are iconic and in all honesty.

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  She would have known that she was gonna leave a mark on him.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was it was premeditated for sure, but we were just being rebellious. The thing is with the Spice Girls, right, we're so relatable because we were normal girls from normal backgrounds that did something extraordinary. And we really pride ourselves on that. So when we found ourselves in those situations, other people might not find themselves. We wanted to do what everybody else wanted to do, you know?

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  I know they're gonna kick us out, but but before they do, are the Spice Girls in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  No, not yet.

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  But you would qualify, I think.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  Do you think?

• 1:07:19Speaker 00

  Because there's a twenty five year, you have to wait, there's some kind of waiting period. Um, do you think there's still some sense of um sort of industry gatekeeping or whatever you want to call it, or feeling that actually, no, that's not purely music, it's that's more of a all

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Cultural movement.

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  Cultural, there we go, that's a good way of putting it. What do you think?

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I, it's interesting. I think as time passes, people become more respectful of what we achieved. And the music speaks for itself. It's bloody good music, you know, it's great pop music that has stood the test of time. And alongside that, it was a cultural movement and it's affected not only a generation of people, it continues to do that. And I'm extraordinarily proud to be a part of it. And we'll, you know, go around talking about it till the end of my days.

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  That was a good way of closing out the conversation. Thanks so much, Melanie C for coming along.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  Thank you, my pleasure.

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  It was, it was really fun. And who would have thought, all those years ago, when I first saw wannabe, that I'd be one day interviewing a Spice Girl?

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:08:40Speaker 00

  And a zig-a-zig ah, which is of course a quote from wannabe. It's Mel B's um signature noise. And do you know what it means? I found that out in, in researching the chat. Do you know what zig-a-zig ah means? I think it's like the noise of orgasm. So you might want to double check that. Um, that's awkward. Piers Morgan, oh, here we go. This is illegal. Ah-oo-ah! That's a legal klaxon. Piers Morgan uh has vehemently denied ever hacking a phone or any knowledge of phone hacking occurring during his time as editor of The Mirror. Nevertheless,

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  in his book, he does talk about someone showing him how to hack a phone. So. Don't say that, Millie says. But he has never hacked a phone, he's always denied hacking a phone, he doesn't know how to do it. But he did say how to do it in his book.

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  He said, he didn't say how to do it, he said he was showing how to do it. But don't say that. Now, Brian Harvey, I've done Brian Harvey a disservice. I think I said that he'd said at the height of E17's fame, he would take nineteen Es in a night. In fact, he only said that he'd take twelve Es in a night. So apologies to Brian Harvey. And on a serious note,

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  they threw Brian under the bus, basically. You can learn more about this in Boy Bands Forever if you're in the UK and you want to watch it on iPlayer. Brian Harvey, the lead singer of E17, there's a plausible scenario that suggests their manager at the time had it in for Brian and more or less sabotaged him by knowing that he was gonna say something

• 1:10:29Speaker 00

  self-canceling in an interview and allowing him to do the interview unchaperoned.

• 1:10:36Speaker 00

  Girl Bands Forever is on iPlayer as well. Mel C's not in it, alas. There are no Spice Girls in Girl Bands Forever, but we have The All Saints, Atomic Kitten, Eternal and many others. What else? Check out the new music. Genuinely, if you like Daft Punk or shimmering disco, it's the kind of music, I don't know if this is, if you, if you were in a club, could be a gay club, doesn't have to be late at night, maybe you are feeling energetic and it's one or two in the morning and you just want to be wearing like a little vest. Am I painting a bit too much?

• 1:11:20Speaker 00

  And you want to dance like with your fists in the air. I know you're thinking, that's not you, Louis. Maybe it is. That's what I was feeling when I was listening to, to, to Mel C's album. What's the album called? Sweat? The album's called Sweat. And who doesn't love the idea of Arnold Schwarzenegger being a musical influence?

• 1:11:43Speaker 00

  I mean, that's some clickbait right there. If you've been affected by the topics discussed in this episode, Spotify do have a website for information and resources. Visit spotify.com/resources. That's it for this week, apart from the credits. The producer was Millie Chu, the assistant producer was Mark Morn, the production manager was Francesca Bassett. The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. This is a Mindhouse Studios production for Spotify. And a zigzag zig...