When she was Sporty, Mel C endured weight problems, clinical depression and
media savagings - but the newly re-energised Melanie Chisholm can have the
last laugh, as she emerges as the Spice most likely to have an enduring
career in pop

Of course, we should all be careful of what we wish for. In Melanie Chisholm's
case, it was precisely at the moment when things started to go right that,
simultaneously, things started to go wrong. The flyer handed to her in a
London street had been guaranteed to fire the imagination: "Are you aged
between 18 and 25? Are you attractive? Can you dance and sing? Do you want to
be in a new, all-girl band?" She was. She could. She did. Bingo! And, in time,
she metamorphosed into "Sporty", one of five young women in what would prove
to be the global pop phenomenon of the Nineties, the Spice Girls.

Along with Melanie Brown (Scary), Emma Bunton (Baby), Geri Halliwell (Ginger)
and Victoria Adams (Posh), Chisholm was pruned and polished for stardom by the
group's then-manager, Simon Fuller. Collectively, and in a blaze of hype, they
were launched at the public in the early summer of 1996. A debut single, the
strident, appropriately named Wannabe, topped the charts in that July, and so
began four years of chart and media ubiquity. All of us, the utterly
uninterested included, were forced to know who they were, and which moniker
was attached to whom. At the very start of it all, though, one of the tabloids
offered a handy guide.

"And what it said is still imprinted on my mind," says Chisholm, now 29. "'Mel
C. The plain one who stands at the back, not doing anything!' Stupid to have
let it bother me, I know, but I was so vulnerable. It compounded my sense of
inadequacy and intensified all the fears I already had about not being good
enough to be in the line-up." Rich, really, given that she was acknowledged to
be by far the most committed, musically. But this wasn't about knowing your
James Brown from your John Galliano. It was about body image and received
notions of beauty. 'I felt the increasing need to look my very very best to
compete. And unfortunately that meant being the absolute thinnest I could be."

For someone prone to self-criticism, being catapulted into the public eye
alongside four other, more conventionally glamorous and photogenic peers was
never likely to be healthy or helpful. "But that's not something you think of
when you're 21 and hungry. God, listen to me! Literally hungry because I was,
most of the time." Having now emerged at the light end of a six-year tunnel of
obsessive dieting and exercising, binge eating, clinical depression,
medication and therapy, Chisholm laughs at her unwitting double entendre. 'I
look at the young girls in today's pop bands, and I fear for them. They start
out healthy then, after just a few months, you notice that one or other is
starting to look really gaunt. I fear, because I know what a horrible,
horrible thing it is to go through."

Three years on from the final Spice Girls' implosion (Halliwell's early
departure had turned them into a foursome in late 1998), Chisholm has much to
feel proud of. In the aftermath, it is she who has fared best in both critical
and commercial terms. A well-received first solo album, Northern Star,
recorded as a side project in 1999, sold three million copies worldwide, and
contained four UK Top Five hits, two of which (Never Be the Same Again and I
Turn to You) reached No 1. Despite some commercial successes on solo projects,
Chisholm's former colleagues have, in general, not fared so well. These days,
Halliwell would appear content to be famous for being famous, while Brown and
Bunton have tried their hands at TV presenting, and Adams, now Mrs David
Beckham, has been recast as the ultimate footballer's wife. Chisholm,
meanwhile, continues to command respect as a pop artist, and a strong second
album, Reason, should further bolster this credibility.

When we meet in the north London offices of her publicist, she acknowledges a
few pre-release nerves. Engagingly, she also admits that, on re-entering the
spotlight at the recent MTV Europe Awards, the thrill of being greeted warmly
by her peers soon palled. "By the end I was thinking, 'If one more person
comes up and tells me how great I'm looking, I'll scream. 'Very nice to hear,
of course, but how completely dreadful did I look before?"

She refuses to talk specifics of weight loss or gain, but what it is possible
to say is that, for the first time in several years, she looks relaxed, happy,
vital... That, in effect, she looks well. Her tenure as a Spice Girl brought
Chisholm instant, worldwide fame and something (again unspecific) of a
financial fortune: "Not as much as people might think, honestly, but more
money than I imagined was possible." Yet, she believes, she has paid in kind.
'It was a fantastic ride. We were so, so lucky and I'm very, very grateful.
But at the same time - and I know it's kind of awful to say - it was f******
horrific, too. I don't think you can put a price on what I or any of us went
through."

That, from childhood, she should have wanted to be a pop star is unsurprising.
Her mother, Joan, now 53, has been in bands since the age of 14, and still
plays the north-west club circuit as the Tina Turneresque vocalist in a
cabaret outfit, River Deep. "She had two gigs in the same day the other week,"
grins her daughter. "That's more than I manage when I'm out on tour."
Originally, home was on the outskirts of Liverpool, but when Melanie was three
her parents divorced and she and her mother moved to Runcorn. "Mum just wasn't
happy. I think my dad wanted her to pack in the singing and stay home, but she
couldn't do it. Like me, music's in her blood."

Within a couple of years, Joan married again, but little Melanie wasn't best
pleased. "He wasn't my dad. Who did he think he was, telling me what to do?"
She smiles. 'Now, I love him dearly. I mean, he brought me up... But back
then, there was a lot of animosity from my side. I was a real test of his love
for my mother." Chisholm has a half-brother, Paul, now 22, from her mum's
second marriage, and two others from her biological father's subsequent
remarriage. "When I was small I thought I was really hard done by, because all
my friends had a mum and a dad, and mine were no longer together. Now, I
realise I'm the fortunate one. I have two mums, two dads, and this fantastic
huge family which I truly appreciate. Everyone gets on, and I love them all."

Her initial interest in performing came from watching her mother rehearse. But
it was dancing, rather than singing, which first excited her. 'I started very
young, and pursued it seriously from the age of eight all day Saturday and two
nights a week after school. And I really excelled - got accepted by a
performing arts college at 16, did a three-year course, and emerged with a
qualification to teach ballet. At which point I set my sights on the West End.
At the time, all dancers wanted to be in Cats, because of the high standards
it required, and I'd had a recall for it just as I got accepted for the Spice
Girls... Not that I'd have been happy in an ensemble. I never wanted to be in
the chorus. I always wanted to be a lead."

Then, as we have established, both the dream and the nightmare began. Though
part of something that was fresh, exciting, media-sexy and genuinely
era-defining, Chisholm was also (it was written) plain, a passenger, and had
thighs that were simply too big to be seen on a pop star. "Previously, I'd
been a normal, healthy girl, one who only if pushed would say that no, she
wasn't very happy with those thighs either. Suddenly, journalists were writing
features about them. Believe me, I knew when I was overweight or not looking
my best. I didn't need someone else to point it out." As a result, she
obsessed. About everything. And, for most of the Spice Girls' shelf-life,
continued to do so.

Some two stone under her previous body weight during this time, she both
drastically reduced her food intake and began to exercise to excess: three
hours per day in the gym became her norm. "Ridiculous, but at the time I
couldn't see it. The weight was coming off, off, off, and the paranoia was
setting in. 'This is what it takes! You've got to keep it up!"' Chisholm says
that, repeatedly, the other Spices took her aside and said, "Melanie, you're
much too thin." Even Victoria? I ask, thinking of how the former Ms Adams went
from being known popularly as Posh to, in certain quarters, Skeletal. Ironic,
no? "I can't talk about that. What I can say is that people around me were
concerned. But, as everyone knows, you can't be helped unless you want to be."

Things came to a head two albums in, and after Halliwell's departure.
Increasingly frustrated by what she hints was her remaining partners' lack of
commitment, Chisholm decided to record a solo album. All manner of stellar
writers and producers proved keen to work with her, and she loved the new
sense of autonomy and individual achievement. The only negative (my
interpretation) was that, in the run-up to Christmas 1999, she had to return
to the Spice fold.

"Melanie [Brown] and Victoria were both pregnant by then and they didn't want
to be in the band. I completely understand that they each had a much bigger
priority. But I'd been really pushing for us to make a third album. It would
be our first without Geri, and so was quite important. We'd already toured
without her, but I wanted to prove we could cut it on record, too. And,
eventually, everyone else came round to the idea." Just as (again, my
interpretation) Chisholm had gone off it. Northern Star was newly out, and
gaining attention, but now here she was back amid what she admits was "the
same old same old...

"After not having had to deal with the egos and bullying and attitude and
everything else of being in a band - any band - it was hard." A series of live
shows was coming up, but "once again, you had people not wanting to rehearse,
disagreements, the usual stuff. I thought to myself, 'I don't need this.' It
was during those final live dates that I decided the Spice Girls were over for
me. And we should have quit straight after them. They were fantastic. We had a
blast. But the album wasn't finished, and though no one's heart was in it, we
had to see it through. Of course, it suffered as a result [combined sales of
'96's Spice and '97's Spiceworld exceeded 35 million, but this, the
unfortunately titled Forever, sold only two million]. To be honest, I didn't
care."

She also wishes, she says now, that she had listened to her body. It had been
a pressurised and emotionally fraught time, and she was exhausted. Instead,
she began what became an 18-month transglobal trek in support of her own
album. And, despite the positive reaction to it, quickly hit rock bottom. "On
those days when I didn't have shows to do, I simply couldn't get out of bed.
And while I never, ever had actively suicidal thoughts, I no longer wanted to
live. I would go to sleep in the hope of not waking up again. My eating
patterns were totally out of control. Eventually, I was diagnosed as being
clinically depressed."

Binge eating for comfort, she visibly ballooned. More cruel headlines, and
more self-induced pressure. There wasn't even a significant other to talk it
all through with. Chisholm says that, prior to the present day, she has had
only one real romantic relationship, "at 18, which is so long ago that I can't
remember what it was like". Because of this lack of a visible male partner,
rumours circulated that she was lesbian. "Believe me, if I were, I'd be up and
out and shouting loudly about it, but the fact is that I'm not, which is
tricky. You don't want to sound like you're saying, 'Ugh! No! Not me!"'

It took a year of experimentation to find the right drugs to stabilise her.
"What worked in the end was Prozac. It takes a few weeks to kick in, but was
amazing in a situation like mine. I'd had this terrible, crippling anxiety
about everything, and it took that away. After a few months, though, I came to
feel like a zombie, zoned out to the point of having no emotions left at all.
That frightened me. 'Am I going to be like this for the rest of my days?' I
knew it was the right time to try and come off."

Counselling played a major part in the healing process, "because while
anti-depressants can be great, they don't tackle the root cause". She tried
all manner of alternative therapies, too. "And the love and support of my
family was key. I'd isolated myself from them. Getting back in regular contact
proved a fantastic thing to do." On recovering some equilibrium, Chisholm then
tackled her weight gain. "I'd lost so much confidence, mainly because of the
way I looked. Even walking down to the shops, I'd be willing people not to
look at me. Having become so uncomfortable in my own skin, I knew it was part
of my overall recovery to get physically healthy again."

Sessions with a personal trainer have paid clear dividends, but she says she
is no longer obsessive about the gym. "I used to be a robot in there. Just
mental. Now, although I'm very active again, I have it in perspective. Being
good to myself used to be so hard, because I hated who I was. A big part of
getting better has been overcoming that."

An unexpected new relationship has also helped greatly. "I've always been
alone as an adult. People would say to me, 'You'll meet someone some day', and
I'd think, 'No, I won't!' I thought I was unlovable, undateable, and having so
many secrets didn't help." She was introduced to Tom Starr, 35, by mutual
friends, and the two have been seeing each other for a year. He is a director
of a Hertfordshire-based construction firm, but has music industry contacts.
"Which is cool, because he inhabits the 'normal' world, yet also understands
what I do. We keep our separate places [Chisholm lives in Hampstead], but he's
in my space a lot. I love his company, and I'll miss him greatly when I start
travelling again."

Which will be in promotion of the enjoyable Reason; largely self-written and
with a quirky, adult pop sensibility that is a refreshing contrast to the more
mainstream or r'n'b-lite directions chosen by her former bandmates. Do the
five remain friends? "I've got a lot of love for them still. But not really
friends, no. I probably speak to Mel the most. And if I bump into Emma
somewhere, we'll have a little chat. If anything happened to any one of them
I'd be devastated, but there's no ongoing relationship. In time, perhaps. Who
knows?"

To borrow from the great sage Ronan Keating, life these past few years has
been a rollercoaster. So much so that she might easily write a book about it
(after all, both Mel B and Mrs Beckham have, while the presumably doubly
fascinating Halliwell has made herself the subject of two autobiographies).
Chisholm smiles and shakes her head. "It's not right for me. I just don't have
that same desire or need to be famous these days. It was my motivation once,
but now I just want to make my music." She screws up her nose, and appears to
study the tattoo on her wrist. "And anyway, God willing, none of us has lived
even half our time on earth yet."