Single spice
Luke Peterson
Single spice
Adam Sweeting
Guardian
Tuesday December 12, 2000
The best line in The Players Club film about Spice Girl Mel B (tonight, 9pm,
BBC2) comes from Melanie Brown's mother, Andrea. She describes how she met
her daughter's husband-to-be, Jimmy Gulzar, and was unimpressed.
"I says 'Jim, I think that you're marrying Melanie for her money and I think
you're gay'," she recalls. But to mouthy Mel, parental disapproval of Jimmy,
allied with the collective doubts of the other Spice Girls, was like a dare.
It made her even more determined to marry Gulzar, with predictable
tabloid-teasing consequences.
Judging by this TV portrait, they should have called her Noisy Spice instead
of Scary Spice. Whether she's at home in Leeds with her family,
potty-training baby Phoenix, or riding round in the back of her limo between
visits to her divorce lawyer, Ms B simply can't shut up. Lob any subject at
her - her childhood showbiz ambitions, the boob job she insists she hasn't
had, or her spectacular country house in Marlow, Bucks - and she rants mild-
mannered interviewer Trevor Nelson to a standstill. Even when she goes for a
pee she has to have somebody to talk to... or at. Her lovely home has a
lavatory with two loos in it, because, according to Mel, "girls always go to
the loo together".
You'll have seen worse celebrity portraits than this - that shocking piece
of drivel about Geri Halliwell and her international "good works", for
instance - but no Spice Girl would ever allow TV cameras across her doorstep
unless she had some product to plug. In this case, the interviewee has two
dollops of money- spinning Yuletide candyfloss on sale, the Spice Girls
album and her own solo effort, the lukewarm Hot. The film boosts Mel's image
of "feisty northern lass", but makes it impossible to believe she has
experienced a moment of serious thought in her life.
Article:
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4103974,00.html