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

Mel and Geri on eating disorders - Jan 4 2008
It seems Mel C and Geri Halliwell have spoken about the weight troubles they suffered from during the height of the Spice Girls’ popularity.

According to Digital Spy, Mel C, who suffered from anorexia during the band’s rise to fame, claimed that she over-exercised.

Sporty Spice - whose real name is Melanie Chisholm - apparently told US television: "My biggest, biggest fear... was that the papers were going to say I’d put on weight.

"I wasn’t eating properly and I was over-exercising. I was very skinny."

Meanwhile Ginger Spice Geri apparently said she was upset by her "podge spice" label.

She said: "I was called podge spice. I was the fat, dumpy one."

The pair, who both had successful solo careers after the band members went their separate ways in 2000, are currently enjoying a reunion tour with the rest of the group.

Mel ’amazed’ by Spice Girls reunion - Nov 14 2007
Mel C has apparently admitted she’s chuffed the Spice Girls have reformed, despite thinking she would never go back to them.

The 33-year-old Sporty Spice said she was amazed by the response to the group’s reunion, but revealed she has been quite happy having her solo career, reports the Daily Star.

Mel said: "For years I always thought I would never go back. It’s a personal thing to me. I had a lot of things to deal with after the Spice Girls. I had a lot of personal issues, and I’ve been very happy as a solo artist."

And she added: "We all hoped that the comeback would be successful, but we are overwhelmed by the actual response. That’s just made us more determined to make the show better than any British pop band has ever put on."

The newly reformed girl band are set to kick off their reunion world tour in Vancouver on December 2.

They have also starred in a special Christmas advert for supermarket giant Tesco, where the girls hide from each other as they shop for gifts.

Mel C ’reluctant over revival’ - Oct 23 2007
Mel C reluctantly agreed to the Spice Girls reunion after the other four said they would go ahead without her.

Sporty Spice was last to agree to the comeback tour and took some persuading.

"The girls approached me and said they were getting together to do a world tour, a greatest hits album and a big goodbye, and I was like: ’Oh no.’ It was the last thing I wanted to hear," the 33-year-old told Closer magazine.

"All four of them had spoken about it and it was set in stone. They basically said if I wanted to do it, great, but if I didn’t want to do it then they were going to do it anyway. So I was like: ’Wow, what do I do?’

"I always said I’d never do it. But I didn’t want to miss out and have regrets. I also didn’t want to be the person that stopped it being the complete five - I was scared I’d be the villain. It was hard, so I didn’t say yes immediately.

"I changed my mind every day - it was difficult."

And she admitted: "The thought of singing Wannabe makes me cringe. But I know I’ll love doing it once we get going."

While the other girls may want to bring out a new album if their reunion proves successful, Mel C is adamant that she won’t.

"I will absolutely be returning to my solo projects when the Spice Girls are over in February."

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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

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