THE SPICE Girls have announced they’re to make a comeback (again, and just four of them) and the news evokes thoughts of Michael Parkinson’s famous quote about meeting the nicest people down Memory Lane.
But are the Spicers people you would want to bump into when your hands are full of message bags, you’ve got sore feet, it’s raining a full cat and dog home of imagery, and you still don’t know what to feed the weans for tea?
The Girls are returning 24 years after they first found pop success. Yet, if positives are to be grasped from this slightly surprising resurrection from the tombs of pop history one could be the fact they are a warning to all young women out there.
Yes, if you sign with the right management agency (who can command the best songwriters to come up with catchy tunes) and you hit the zeitgeist with faux feminist imagery and can manage to make a reverse v-sign, then you can make millions. But then what happens?
No sooner have the five friends been sharing make-up, having fun sleepovers and pillow fights, than fights become real. The complaints surface. The egos in some heads soar. And the band implodes.
Victoria Beckham, it seems, is more likely to be smiling in front of a press camera than she is to be putting on the platform trainers once again.
In fact, the other group members didn’t even bother to ask her if she’d show up.
“Do you know what is actually quite funny?” says Mel C. “I saw Victoria recently and obviously we’ve all been in contact – she really supports us and we really support her. But she did raise the point that she was never actually asked. We just presumed.”
Geri added: “I spoke to her before the announcement and she has said it for years that she just doesn’t want to do it any more, so we knew that.”
VB has as much time for Mel B, it’s claimed, as Donald Trump does for CNN reporters.
As for Mel B, the Leeds-born singer has blown, allegedly, most of her £38 million fortune. And it’s not that she can boast of a happy home life to the fans who once looked up to her.
The Scarier Spice has lurched from one relationship crisis to another, with three children to three men with each divorce case producing serious legal costs and countless tawdry tabloid tales.
Yes, Geri Horner has since worked hard as a children’s writer and Emma Bunton as a radio presenter. As has the Sporty Spice, Mel C. But Mel C says she doesn’t view the idea of the reunion with delight. In fact, it’s claimed she’s only getting back with the rest because she feels pressured into it – if she doesn’t she may suffer massive criticism. (Victoria Beckham is too much of a world brand to worry about letting the side down.)
The big problem is that big success has resulted in giant egos. On the last tour, the group travelled alone with their own entourage, a far cry from taking the tube together for nights out.
And Geri is said to be jealous of Victoria, even though Ms Beckham’s fashion business loses money faster than M&S is losing touch with its customer base.
Emma Bunton, always the peacemaker, has said however that the door is open to Victoria should she decide to join her one-time chums on stage.
But the only way that would work is if Victoria’s management could use the opportunity to increase sales of her clothing range, which the rest of the group would surely rail against.
As it stands, attempts to sell the Spice Girls brand of “female solidarity and love” could be tough.
Fans will know instinctively now that the love, the unifiers the group used to send soaring into the night skies of female possibility have all gone the way of last week’s cheap rockets. It’s all about Viva Cash Forever, and the £10m on the table.
That’s the Girl Power message these days.
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