Mel C

Profession: Singer
Place/Date of Birth: Widnes, Cheshire, 12 January 1974
Associated with: Emma Bunton, Geri Halliwell, Mel B, Spice Girls, Victoria Beckham

"I ignored my eating disorder in the Spice Girls. I was thin and over-exercised."

Spice life was ’crazy’, says Mel - Mar 27 2007
Mel C has lifted the lid on the backstage "bullying and bitching" in the Spice Girls - saying the girl power group was "crazy".

The singer told The Observer that there was a lot of cattiness as the fivesome rose to fame in the 90s.

"Girls can be terrible bullies, worse than blokes," she said. "The Spice Girls were crazy. There was a lot of bullying and bitching. Your insecurities could be exploited by others to bolster their self-esteem. But we’ve all said sorry now."

Mel also revealed she had an eating disorder during her time with the group and admitted she was hurt when critics called her names such as "Sumo Spice".

"I’m quite vulnerable. The criticism got through. When someone calls you Sumo Spice, it’s one person’s stupid joke - but if it catches you at a bad moment, it can feel like the whole world is against you," she said.

Mel now leads a quieter life - and says she wouldn’t have it any other way after seeing how former Posh Spice Victoria Beckham lives.

She said: "I spent a day with Victoria in Madrid. I’d forgotten what it’s like being stalked by paparazzi and the state of your fringe being world headline news.

"I thought, ’This would be fun for about a week’. But it’s exhausting. Of course she doesn’t have to cook or clean or do a supermarket shop, but it’s like people living in your head."

Mel feeling left out of the Spice nursery - Mar 21 2007
The Spice Girls are all becoming Spice Mums - except Melanie Chisholm, who has admitted she is starting to get broody.

The former Sporty Spice told Closer magazine that she’s been spending time with ex-band mates Emma Bunton and Geri Halliwell, which has made her start to think about having a family.

"Geri lives near me now, so Emma and I spent the day with her and Bluebell recently. Geri is just really enjoying motherhood and is happy doing that. Meanwhile, Emma is a glowing mum-to-be! We’re all in our 30s now so it’s a natural time to be focussing on family," she said.

But she added that her career is her main focus for now: "I definitely want to be a mum and I’d like more than one child. At the moment my priority is my music, but I’m already 33, so I’d better get cracking!"

The singer said that she missed the reunion with Emma, Victoria and Geri recently because she would rather meet in private.

But she said she didn’t keep in touch with the fifth Spice Girl, Mel B, and didn’t know much about her current paternity battle with Eddie Murphy.

She said the fact that the other Spice Girls were all becoming mums would prevent the band from reforming like Take That, but that she would welcome a limited reunion.

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Biography

Melanie C - Mel C - Sporty Spice - whatever you want to call her - this is one lass who is proud to be from Liverpool. Born in Whiston Hospital, Merseyside, she was brought up in Rainhill, then Widnes and grew up in a sports-mad Liverpool-supporting family and became an accomplished player herself. Her love of Liverpool FC and sport in general became her trademark, and after deciding to incorporate her high-kicks into the spice girl act, her fate was sealed, and she was known as sporty spice for ever after.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave these past 6 years, you will have heard of Mel C and even if you don’t know her by name, you must have heard of The Spice Girls and their message of girl power. They were the girl band of the 90’s who for a while, really seemed to rule the world. They broke America, toured the world....they’ve sold something like 40million albums worldwide. Which really is quite an extraordinary thing for five such ordinary english girls to achieve. Mel was the quieter one, a bit shy- but then with the likes of Geri, Mel B and Posh around, it’s not surprising that she didn’t try and compete for the spotlight. She was generally considered to have the best voice out of the group, and although that’s not saying much, she has gone on to prove her critics wrong.

Although the spice girls have never offically split, they’ve have all gone their separate ways over the past two years to work on solo projects. For most of them, they have had to learn the hard way that being a member of a successful group and being in the papers does not guarantee you success as a soloist. Mel B was recently dumped by her record label Virgin. Emma also got the chop a few months later, depite having a No1 with ’what took you so long’. Geri’s album had very dissapointing sales, despite having a few successful singles. And then there’s Victoria. She’s in a league of her own celebrity wise, but she still insists on making music and banging on about proving to people that she can sing, when we all know she can’t. Her album bombed out of the charts like a lead balloon.

The picture is looking much more rosy for Mel C. Her album ’Northern Star’ (a name that proudly shows off her Liverpudlian roots) has been a massive No1 success, and is still riding high in the charts after nearly a year. Although she got off to a bit of a rocky start - people couldn’t quite believe she was for real - when she strolled onto the stage at Glastonbury acting like Sid Vicious people laughed. She’s not punk, she’s a spice girl, who’s she trying to kid? But she soldiered on, and people came to see that it wasn’t just an act, that her tastes in music weren’t represented by what she did with the spice girls.

Mel has been dogged by the press continually, and seemed to be at breaking point at the end of last year. She said she couldn’t take the pressure of having her weight continually analyzed in the tabloids, and said how much it hurt her when she read things like ’beefy spice’, which did seem to be a ridiculous double standard when at the same time the same press were still calling Victoria ’skeletal spice’. But she’s a bit of a comeback kid, and has bounced back. She has her dark hair back again (soooo much better than blonde) and is looking very trim indeed.

Mel C - a real northern star to be proud of.
January 2008