The C Word

Melanie Chisolm is the girl formerly known as Sporty - the Spice Girl with
the winning smile, big mouth and wicked sense of humour.  But here, in her
first cover interview for two years, she reveals that she has suffered from
eating disorders and depression, exercised to the point of obsession, and
is longing for the right man.  


Time is a funny old thing. One year you're singing into your hairbrush in
front of the mirror in your Liverpool council house, the next you're on
stage, performing before hundreds of thousands of screaming kids at Wembley
Stadium.  Then, just when you've been neatly packaged as a skinny little
tracksuit-wearing, backflipping teen idol, suddenly you morph into the
nation's coolest rock chick, all tattoos, gold teeth and spray-on denim.
And one of your best friends is Bryan Adams. How cool is that?

It's a long way from Merseyside to Chelsea, but that's where Melanie
Chisolm is today. And so am I. In Bryan Adams's stunning warehouse/
photographic studio, overlooking the Thames. We've chosen Melanie
(apparently she doesn't like to be called Mel any more) as our cover girl
as she is the current undisputed heavyweight champion of all things rock.
Which is odd for a young woman who shot to fame as one fifth of the
poppiest all-singing, all-dancing, all-girl pop act ever.

When Melanie arrives, she's about as flash as a D-reg Ford Fiesta.
Bare-faced, in dark blue cropped combats and a black vest, her hair has
grown out of the short crop she was wearing last year and is at what most
of us would regard as that awkward stage somewhere between short and long.
(For the record: she liked the spiky short do when she had it done, but
now looks back and thinks, "Eugh!") That's not to say she isn't pretty.
She is. Very. Just in a natural, big brown-eyed sort of way. There's no
bounding into the vast, designer-clad, minimalist living room, or shouting
over-exuberant hellos at the assembled posse. She seems friendly and
earnest and perhaps even a little down. "How have you been?" asks Bryan,
who is shooting her for our cover, giving her a bear hug. "Oh, up and down,
you know," she replies.

Melanie hasn't had an easy ride of late. As she puts it, "The tabloids
can't say anything else about me - I'm fat, I'm gay, I'm on drugs. I can't
win." Actually, she's not fat. Nowhere near. Yes, she's heavier than she
once was, but as I watch her wriggle into a pair of Earl Jeans I reckon
she's probably still a size ten - and, at 5ft 6in, that's slim. Of course,
all the Spice Girls are used to having their most personal details flashed
up for the nation in neon lights, but Melanie admits it still hurts when
the press are really mean. "I know I've put on weight," she says. "But I'm
healthy. In the past, I have suffered from eating disorders. I got into
that trap of thinking, 'I've got to be thin, I've got to be thin', and I
over-exercised and didn't eat properly."

In April, the tabloids were plastered with pictures of a bikini-clad
Melanie on a beach in Barbados. She was described as "butch and beefy". A
national debate ensued. Has Melanie C stopped exercising? Is she on
steroids? What happened to that famous skinny frame and taut tummy?
Everyone pored over the photographs for signs of cellulite and rolls of
flab. And I have to admit that I stared, too. Now, face-to-face with
Melanie, I feel guilty as hell. What 26-year-old wouldn't be gutted by
such public criticism of her body?

What most of us probably hadn't realised is that Melanie is actually quite
a sensitive soul who takes it all to heart. "I never thought I was good
enough to be a Spice Girl, so I had to make myself as perfect as I could,"
she explains. "Then I just thought, 'Wait a minute, I'm not a robot.' So I
stopped. I'm just trying to get myself back together now, I was too thin,
but it's hard when you've come from the extreme to accept your natural
figure. I still love working out, but it's not an obsession any more." She
was so angry with the press about being labelled fat that she wore a
T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "Tabloids kiss my fit a**" at a BBC
live concert earlier this year.

Actually, the whole fat debacle couldn't have come at a worse time. After
years of being caught upon the Spice Girl bandwagon, Melanie says she's
currently in the middle of a mid-twenties crisis.

"The whole Spice Girls thing has been such a head f***," she explains.
"It's taken me a long, long time to get my head round what has happened
[the whole Spice Girls phenomenon] and get on with my life." Her darkest
moment was at Christmas, when she realised she was depressed. "I think
everybody is searching for happiness - that's our eternal struggle," she
explains. "I'm one of those people who feels quite insecure. In fact, at
first in the Spice Girls, I felt like a bit of a spare part. I used to
think, 'If I was gorgeous, I'd be happy. If I was rich, I'd be happy. If I
had a great boyfriend, then I'd be happy.' But, as you get older, you
realise that those things are nice, but at the end of the day you can have
everything you ever wanted and still wake up in the morning and not want to
get out of bed. When you have got everything you ever dreamed of and you're
still not happy, you think 'F***. What is it that I do need?'"

Melanie hasn't done a magazine cover shoot for a long time - "Not since I
put on weight or since 1998 to be exact" - and admits to feeling
self-conscious about being the centre of attention. When Arabella our
fashion editor, holds up a pair of fabulous pale blue jeans, Melanie
wrinkles her little nose and says, "No. Maybe if I was a stone lighter..."
What she is evidently very pleased with are her new bigger boobs. In a
skin-tight Chloe top, her cleavage looks magnificent. "These cost me
thousands of pounds," she laughs. "In food and beer."

Bryan's chef has prepared a delicious vegan feast, which the Marie Claire
team devours in five minutes flat. Melanie eats nothing, but is quite happy
using the host as a waiter while she has hair extensions and black sparkly
make-up applied. "Madame would like a drink," says Bryan, taking a bottle
of Absolut vodka from the stainless-steel fridge. She likes a drink, does
Ms Chisolm, The previous weekend you could have found her singing Never Be
The Same Again in her mate's bar in Liverpool, after one too many beers.

Maybe it's the hair, maybe it's the make-up, it might even be the vodka,
but once Melanie appears in front of the camera, she's obviously a pro. A
swift head tilt here, a flash of eye there and we know she's going to look
stunning in the pictures. The new Spice Girls album is playing in the
background (we're the first to hear it other than the girls themselves) and
it helps that the photographer is a close friend. The two banter and tease
each other incessantly. Melanie keeps flicking her nipples to make them
stand out. Bryan wonders if he should get some ice. At one point, Melanie
slithers down the whiter than white wall of Bryan's pristine kitchen (it's
doubling as the backdrop for the shot) and leaves a 2ft denim-coloured
mark behind. "S***. Did I just do that?" she asks in disbelief, staring at
her vandalism. "Don't tell him." When  Bryan eventually notices, he just
suggests Melanie sign the mark for posterity. Later, when he lays out the
Polaroids for us all to see, Melanie jumps on his back for a closer look.
"My legs are too short, I can't see," she complains. Even insecure Ms C
must be happy with the pictures. "I do feel better as I see the pictures
come through," she admits. "But when you feel crap inside, it's difficult."

The last time I checked The Sun, each Spice Girl was worth £26 million.
What's to feel crap about? "Well, money can't buy love," says Melanie. "And
anyway, I'm not Elton John rich." (This is how the Spice Girls gauge their
wealth. They have conversations which start, "If I was Elton John rich...")
As a girl who admits to having a boyfriend once in a blue moon, and then
only for five minutes, Melanie says that being a megastar can be an
isolating experience. "It gets lonely," she explains. "I think the hardest
thing to deal with is being on stage in front of tens of thousands of
people and you're giving it all and then you go back to your hotel room and
you feel so lonely. Everyone thinks I've got this fantastic life, but if
you haven't got a partner then you're lonely. That's what everyone wants at
the end of the day - someone to call, someone to talk to. Instead, you just
sit there waiting for the buzz to go so that you can fall asleep."

Melanie's most recent boyfriend was J, from boy band Five. They split up in
July and when I ask what happened, she laughs and says, "You tell me." It
seems to be the usual story - he's in a band, she's in band, there's no
time... Although Melanie does have another explanation: "He's very young -
24 going on fifteen. Ha, ha, ha." What is certain is that Melanie likes
boys - not girls. The same pictures that revealed how fat she was earlier
this year also unveiled her close friend Ying. The overtones of lesbianism
were hardly subtle. Ying is also at the shoot. Not because she and Melanie
are joined at the hip, but because she's an assistant to all of the Spice
Girls. At first Melanie thought the whole gay thing was one big hilarious
joke, but lately it's got a bit wearing. "I used to think it was funny, but
I've got alot of fans who are lesbians and sometimes I get them coming up
to me and saying, 'When are you going to come out?' The papers are trying
to make out I'm a liar. I'm not a liar. If I was gay, I'd tell everyone and
I'd be proud," she says firmly. Then that easy laugh starts again. "I
started feeling guilty because I wasn't gay. I was thinking, maybe I should
be a lesbian. Sometimes I wish I was because men are so crap. Do you know
what I mean?"

What isn't funny is that Ying got labelled, too. "That was very upsetting,"
says Melanie. "She doesn't want to be famous. I get paid enough money to
put up with it. It's part of my job. She doesnt. It's not fair on her or
her family. All these scummy little journalists went round to their homes,
banging on doors and trying to talk to them. It's disgusting. They really
are the scum of the earth. Ninety per cent of what they write is made up."
Scum of the earth maybe, but Melanie still likes to keep up with tabloid
gossip. "I have to read them to see what's going on in my life. Am I
single? Do I have a boyfriend? Ha, ha, ha."

On the day of the shoot, the front page splash of The Sun has the news that
Geri "Ex Spice" HaIliwelI and Robbie "Ex of Melanie" Williams are "deeply
in love". I wonder if Melanie has any insider info on this most serious of
topics. "I'm not really in touch with Geri," she says, pondering. "Geri and
Robbie... I've no idea. I've seen Robbie quite recently and I was aware of
them having a friendship, but the romance thing is news to me. It's none of
my business. I did go on a few dates with him but that was years ago."

Melanie is a real girl's girl. I've known her for all of three hours and I
feel like taking her out for a few jars and having a good old girlie
gossip. I want to be her friend. She loves living in Hampstead, North
London, because "it's so posh", but she still shops in the local
supermarket. "I get the bus to Sainsbury's," she says. "People ask me,
'What are you doing here?' But I'm just a normal person." Conversely,
though, Melanie says that of all the Spices, she has always been the one
most hungry for fame. "I wanted to be like Madonna. I wanted not to be able
to go to the shops. But as stardom came, I realised I quite liked being
normal. That's what you learn. I've met some of my idols, like Madonna, and
she's human, too. We're all the same."

The thing is, most normal 26-year-olds don't have millions in the bank,
and they can't fill Wembley Stadium. Neither do they frequent the Met Bar
or count the Appleton sisters as mates. Naturally, I quiz her for celebrity
scandal and she's so open she tells me. Let me share: Melanie reckons the
Geri and Chris Evans romance might have been real. According to Melanie,
Geri is a bit pushy - I get the feeling Melanie is not Geri's biggest fan.
Nicole Appleton and Liam Gallagher are definitely an item, and when I ask
if Nicole will be jealous of Rabble and Geri's romance, she almost falls
off her seat laughing at the suggestion that Nicole would give a monkey's.
Brilliant!

What is refreshingly ordinary about Melanie are the things she worries
about - putting on weight, getting walked over by men, her career and
finding a decent relationship. "My life as it is at the moment is almost
faultless, but I would like a relationship," she says. "It's not going to
solve all my problems, but it would be nice - someone to come home to, to
watch telly with. I suppose I just want someone to adore me." I point out
that millions of people love her. She laughs, "Yeah, but I want someone I
adore."

At the end of the shoot, Melanie kisses me on both cheeks and promises to
look out for me on Hampstead Heath. "I'll be jogging," she smiles, patting
her not-very-fat-at-all-actually bum. I head back to my husband, dog and
not very glamorous one-bedroomed flat to spend the evening watching telly
with the man I adore. "I suppose I'm quite lucky," I think. But I stop for
a lottery ticket on the way - after all, a few million in the bank and a
house in Hampstead would be nice.