Unless she'd backflipped into the room singing, "I wanna really, really, really wanna zigazig ah," Melanie Chisholm couldn't have entered looking more like the Sporty Spice of old. She's wearing tracksuit bottoms, trainers and a tiny white crop top that shows off the tattoos I could draw from memory: Celtic cross on her left arm, Celtic band on her right.
I've interviewed Hollywood A-listers, revered authors and renowned politicians but never been as starstruck as I am meeting a real-life Spice Girl. I fail to play it cool. Before her green tea has arrived I tell Mel C how I loved the band, how I had their posters on my wall, how I cried when Geri left. She smiles politely. I ramble about how my best friend at school, Joey, won a competition to meet the Spice Girls in the 1990s and returned with a pair of platform boots that they'd given her. She wore the boots to school chapel, which I thought was a bit much.
As one fifth of the world's biggest girl group, Chisholm has met everyone from Prince Charles and Prince to Nelson Mandela ("These are my heroines," Mandela said on meeting them). Simply to shut myself up, I ask who has made her feel starstruck. "Like yourself, it's the people who, when I was a kid, I adored and admired, like Stevie Wonder, Madonna and Michael Jackson," she says. In 1998 Madonna invited her to a small dinner in New York. "She is both charming and really f***ing intimidating," Chisholm writes in her new book.
The memoir, Who I Am, is the reason for the interview and, thankfully, it has considerably more depth than the Sporty Spice: In My Pocket unofficial biography that I read aged nine. The singer is nervous about its release: "There's a part of my personality — and maybe this is a northern working-class thing — it's a bit like [she puts on a thicker Scouse accent], 'Who do you think you are? You think you're special?' " She is also conscious that her story inevitably involves the other Spices: Victoria "Posh" Beckham, Emma "Baby" Bunton, Melanie "Scary" Brown and Geri "Ginger" Horner. "I don't have any vendettas or scores to settle," she says, adding that journalists often focus on her negative experiences in the band.
"I was completely and utterly achieving my wildest dreams, but it had its downside. It's like everything in life, nothing is all one thing," she says, kicking off her shoes. The downsides for Chisholm were extreme: pushing herself to be the perfect pop star, she wrestled with eating disorders, anxiety and depression. The other Spice Girls were hard on her — perhaps envious that she was the strongest performer — but she was hardest on herself. "I would be the best I could possibly be in every way," she writes. "It would nearly kill me."
She has claimed that Mel B bullied her in the band. "Maybe there was a clash of personalities because the nicer I was, the more irritated it made her," she says. The pair made up long ago: "We love each other dearly, even though at times we probably wanted to kill each other."
Chisholm, 48, hoots with laughter recalling the band's physical scraps. "I can see us in our fluffy white robes at the Four Seasons in LA, and me and Melanie were getting a bit 'grr grr grr' after a night," she says. "We'd come back to the bar, we were on the port, so it was obviously one of those nights where there had been quite a few beverages. And Geri, trying to keep the peace and keep us apart, ended up getting clocked in the face."
Chisholm, who left home in Widnes, near Liverpool, for a performing arts college in the suburbs of southeast London aged 16, had resigned herself to working on a cruise ship when the Spice Girls were assembled in 1994. "As soon as I saw that audition notice, I knew I was going to get it," she writes. Those early days of the group — skint, rehearsing madly, living together in a rented house in Maidenhead and driving around in Geri's battered Fiat Uno — are the ones she remembers most fondly. "We were on that mission to make all of these dreams come true," she says, smiling. "We were so full of ambition and optimism, and we were all in it together."
Spicemania was extraordinary. Appearing seemingly from nowhere, in 1996 these high-kicking young women released Wannabe as their debut single (going against the record label's wishes) and topped the charts in 37 countries. The fivesome sold more than 35 million copies of their first two studio albums and kick-started a softer "girl power" feminism. They conquered America, made a movie and proved wrong the music industry naysayers who'd told them that teenage girls were only interested in boy bands. Forget Take That, here were the poster girls for Cool Britannia — Tony Blair cleverly cosied up to them and Prince Charles grinned awkwardly as they pawed him and patted his bum.
From 1996 to the end of 1998 they jetted around the world promoting, performing and making millions. Brilliantly on brand, Chisholm used her first decent pay packet (£10,000) to buy a pair of Nike Air Max at JD Sports. Did they really have 10 suitcases for shoes alone? "And that was just Mel B probably," Chisholm says, laughing. "Luckily I always packed quite light. Sporty was quite an easy one, everything was foldable."
Hounded by fans and paparazzi wherever they went, the schedule sounds shattering. "You're living on nerves. It was incredible but, with hindsight, how on earth did we physically do it?" she says, looking weary at the memory. "This is why a lot of pop bands have quite a short lifespan, because you burn out really quickly." (Certainly the Spice Girls burnt fast and bright: in 1997 they fired Simon Fuller, their manager, claiming he was too controlling; Geri left in 1998 after less than two years in the spotlight and they released their third and final album in 2000.)
On meeting the teenage pop superstar Billie Eilish in 2019, Chisholm offered her advice: "I felt this immediate connection because she's in the eye of the storm. I felt like I wanted to ground her for a moment to go, 'Just take it in, enjoy it, it goes so quickly.' "
Today Chisholm lives in north London with her 13-year-old daughter, Scarlet, and seems to be a happy, healthy ball of enviable energy. Her relationships with the other Spice Girls are better than ever: "We're just at a point where we really respect each other." She regularly sees Baby, who lives nearby, is just off the phone with Ginger and lights up reminiscing about Posh's son's "jaw-dropping" wedding in Florida in April. "Brooklyn [Beckham] was the first Spice baby to get married, so it was lovely to be there and to support Victoria," she says, adding that Mel B kept Scarlet entertained, "because obviously I'm just embarrassing". The wedding band played a cover version of Wannabe, but Chisholm didn't dance: "Scarlet would never have forgiven me."
In July she watched the Women's Euro final at Wembley with Horner, who received flak for having her photograph taken with Liz Truss and Nadine Dorries. "I hid behind a plant pot," Chisholm says, laughing. "We were in the hospitality tent and I spotted them walking towards us, and I just went like that [she leaps up and throws herself behind the sofa]."
Horner, who is married to the Formula One boss Christian Horner, and is more lady of the manor these days, memorably described Margaret Thatcher as the "first Spice Girl" and the band as "true Thatcherites" in a Spectator interview in 1996. Having grown up in a working-class Labour household in Widnes, that's not how Chisholm has ever seen things. "Where do you find a group of five people with the same political views? Unless they're all working for the same party," she says, describing herself as a "bit of a lefty". "We all feel quite differently."
Of all the Spice Girls, it's Chisholm who is still making music and performing to live crowds. She has released eight solo albums, with varying degrees of success, and won accolades for her stage roles in the musicals Blood Brothers and Jesus Christ Superstar. Now she DJs around the world — "I play quite a lot of house, and a bit of jungle at the moment" — and, when we meet, she is excited to have Gay Pride shows in Cardiff and Manchester coming up.
In the group's heyday it was insinuated by the tabloid media that Chisholm was a lesbian. "That really signifies how we've changed as a culture, doesn't it? Because it was almost like it was an accusation of being gay," she says. "A lot of it was judged on my appearance, which is an outdated notion, thank goodness. But I actually love that [it happened] now because it gives me this affinity with the gay community."
In recent years Chisholm has leant into her status as a gay icon and performed alongside drag queens at Pride events everywhere from Brazil to Belfast. Would she identify as queer? "I would but not in a sense of my sexual preference," she says. "Just in a way that I want to be, how I want to express myself in my life. I'm straight in the sense that I've only ever had male partners but, yeah, I feel like I'm a queer person in my heart."
On the romance front Chisholm has had a rough ride. In the 1990s Robbie Williams pursued her and then cruelly dropped her ("he did break my heart a bit", she writes) and Jason "J" Brown, who was in the boy band 5ive, dumped her publicly in the press. Ten years ago she split up with the father of her daughter, Thomas Starr, a property developer, and she recently broke up with her long-term boyfriend, the music producer Joe Marshall, although he still works as her manager and the pair arrived at the interview together, laughing happily. "It's quite grown-up, isn't it?" Chisholm says.
I ask about relationships not sticking. "I don't know whether it's being in the public eye or whether it's a personal thing. I think being a successful woman makes things more complicated," she says. "But who knows the reasons why some people find a soulmate and stay together forever and then other people … For me, I've decided that life is a series of chapters. I think that's a good way to not have regrets."
For now she's single. "Make sure that's a big headline, 'Single, ready to mingle.' No, I'm joking. This is my Tinder profile in The Sunday Times, I feel that's quite a good place," she says, grinning.
Chisholm's mum, a singer, and dad, who works in sport, divorced when she was three and both remarried. Cue half-brothers, stepbrothers and a half-sister the existence of whom she discovered only after the media started digging into the Spice Girls' families in 1997. Her parents' separation shook her — "as a little girl I felt like I'd failed because I hadn't been able to keep my mum and dad together" — and made her seek attention and validation on stage.
It also put her off walking down the aisle herself. "I've never, never wanted to marry," she says firmly. "Maybe marriage works for some people, but maybe to think it works for the majority is an old-fashioned notion."
In the Spicemania era, the tabloid press would mock Chisholm for being the band's singleton and pick apart her appearance, variously calling her Plain Spice, Beefy Spice and, when she put on a little weight, Sumo Spice. "The tabloid media has really impacted my self-esteem, the way I feel about myself, my talent, my place on this planet," she says. "They go, 'Oh, you asked for it,' and it's, like, no, nobody asks for that."
Her anorexia, and the agony of keeping it secret, stole much of her Spice Girls enjoyment. For years she lived on mainly fruit and vegetables and would always squeeze in hours-long workouts. "Having an eating disorder can make you feel so alone and so isolated," she says, her eyes welling up.
She says the culture has improved with the body positivity movement, but "the obsession with how women look still goes on in certain publications. They just can't seem to help themselves commenting on somebody's 'ample assets', or 'flaunting this'. And it's, like, 'f*** off'. It just seems so not of this time to speak like that."
Following the success of her 1999 debut album, Northern Star, she hit a crisis point. She would binge eat until she passed out, suffered panic attacks, became agoraphobic and feared that she'd gone mad. "I was so filled with self-hatred that I would throw myself around the room, banging my head on the walls and the floor, hitting myself," she writes. In 2000 she was diagnosed with depression, put on antidepressants and began therapy and alternative treatments, including acupuncture.
These days Sporty Spice looks fitter than the average personal trainer. She is a triathlon nut and lifts weights with her personal trainer, which enables her to jump around stage "like I'm 25, even though I'm not". Exercise is key for her mental health: "I have this mind-body connection, where if I feel physically strong, I feel emotionally strong."
What is her relationship with food like now? "Oh my God, so much better. I would say my fear is, and I feel this with depression, once you've experienced it, you're always conscious of it just being in the wings," she says. "The damage is done. I've had to work really hard to have a healthy attitude towards things. And often I will second-guess myself and I just have to go, 'No, no, you're fine.' It's almost like I'm like keeping an eye on myself and it's exhausting."
Throughout our conversation Chisholm is wary not to focus on the "doom and gloom", emphasises how fortunate she has been and is quick to laugh. Motherhood has clearly been particularly transformative. "It was really important for me physically, mentally, emotionally," she says. "I'd been the focus of everything, being in this very selfish profession where everything is about you. All of a sudden it's not about you. It's all about somebody else and it's a huge relief and very liberating."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, she is grateful that her teenage daughter doesn't want to follow her into a career in the performing arts, "because I know how cruel it can be. And I think being the child of somebody in the public eye, it must be hard to step out from that shadow."
It sounds like Scarlet keeps her mum's feet on the ground; she recently accused her of not being relevant. "I am actually relevant to quite a lot of people, darling, just not 13-year-olds," she says, rolling her eyes. "But you have to be honest about your demographic." At Glastonbury this year Chisholm played a DJ set, mixing Spice Girls hits and modern bangers, that was so popular latecomers couldn't squeeze inside the tent.
The band reunited for the London 2012 Olympics closing ceremony and enjoyed sell-out reunion tours in 2007 and 2019. Chisholm would love to do another one. She is proud of the band's legacy. Of course there were plenty of haters: in 1997 Liam Gallagher said he was avoiding the Brit awards because if he bumped into the Spice Girls he'd "chin 'em"; Radiohead's Thom Yorke described them as "the Antichrist". "Maybe some of the artists around that time who were very anti Spice Girls, they probably still hate the music but I think now they've gone, 'Actually, hats off,' " she says. "I feel like we changed a lot in pop culture."
My allotted time with Chisholm ended five minutes ago. She's now standing but I can't stop my fangirl grilling. Why haven't the Spice Girls performed at Glastonbury? "We've never been asked." When did she last do a backflip? "I've done one in my forties, but it's been a while." How many tracksuits does she own? "Hundreds." Any tattoo regrets? "I'd quite like to have my leg back," she says, pulling up her trackies to show me a large multicoloured dragon on her calf. Finally, Chisholm hugs me goodbye, saying she must go to the loo. I manage not to follow her in.
What the other Spice Girls did next
Geri Horner
After breaking millions of tween hearts by leaving the group in May 1998, Ginger Spice went on to have a fairly successful solo career, which mostly will be remembered for a cover of the Weather Girls' hit It's Raining Men. Now 50, she lives with her husband, the Red Bull F1 boss Christian Horner, on a country estate in Oxfordshire with their son, Montague, daughter Bluebell from a previous relationship, 14 horses, three donkeys and a chicken called Ginger (naturally).
Victoria Beckham
The former high priestess of the WAGs is now the matriarch of Brand Beckham — a social media-savvy brood including husband David, sons Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz, and her new daughter-in-law, the billionaire heiress Nicola Peltz. Together they have an Instagram following of 128 million (her daughter, Harper, 11, is yet to make her online debut). Off the back of the WAG media frenzy of the mid-2000s, the artist formerly known as Posh Spice, now 48, founded her eponymous fashion label in 2008 and a beauty offshoot in 2019 (estimates put the fashion empire's losses at more than $95 million).
Emma Bunton
Almost three decades since she was given her nickname, Baby Spice still has an eye for its commercial potential — Bunton, 46, now runs the eco-baby brand Kit & Kin and has written a parenting book, Mama You Got This. She has two children with her husband, Jade Jones, formerly of the 1990s boy band Damage, and hosts a show on Heart radio.
Melanie Brown
Scary Spice reinvented herself as a TV personality, with stints as a judge on talent shows such as The X Factor. She has three daughters: with her first husband, Jimmy Gulzar, a dancer; the actor Eddie Murphy; and her second husband, the film producer Stephen Belafonte. In 2017 she filed for divorce, accusing Belafonte of emotional and physical abuse, which he denied. She is now a patron of Women's Aid.
• Who I Am: My Story by Melanie C is published by Welbeck on September 15
Written by: Laura Pullman
© The Times of London