23 minutes ago, -Jay- said:

I saw this posted somewhere but couldn’t find where she’d commented this…

I think she commented under some Hot celebration post.

47 minutes ago, -Jay- said:

I saw this posted somewhere but couldn’t find where she’d commented this…

It was under the instagram post she made about Hot turning 25!

Hopefully she’s serious about it! A third Mel B album would be interesting (I shouldn’t get ahead of myself, a new single would feel like a miracle after all these years lol)

39 minutes ago, -Jay- said:

Hopefully she’s serious about it! A third Mel B album would be interesting (I shouldn’t get ahead of myself, a new single would feel like a miracle after all these years lol)

Yeah I mean we've had so many promises from Mel over the years that didn't turn into reality, so we should keep our expectations low...

I could see Universal doing a limited vinyl of Hot for Record Store Day, as that would be the last solo Spice one released under that label to still not have had a release (as VB and Geri clearly would not allow theirs!).

I don’t understand why Geri is stopping hers since she’s not releasing any music

13 minutes ago, Rebel said:

I don’t understand why Geri is stopping hers since she’s not releasing any music

Apparently she has blocked quite a few released of Schizophonic over the years, not just vinyls but even 20th anniversary celebrations... there's a few accounts on PopJustic that have mentioned this and it has always been Geri blocking everything...

Mel B is now a brand ambassador for Revive Collagen, a menopause-helping brand

https://www.instagram.com/p/DWBRbGwDB1k

Mel B: Why I gave up LA for Leeds

The former Spice Girl, Melanie Brown, 50, on her third marriage, menopause and life in Yorkshire

Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice, appears on my Zoom screen like an alien, her face concealed by a huge, white LED mask that apparently boosts collagen. “It’s my morning routine,” she explains in her broad Yorkshire accent. “What I like is, you can walk around and talk while wearing it. I do 17 minutes a day.”

At 50, Brown still radiates the raucous, teenage zig-a-zig-ah energy with which she and the Spice Girls burst unapologetically into the world in 1996, preaching Girl Power. Thirty years on, a lot’s happened: three marriages, three children, near bankruptcy, now the menopause. Yet Brown’s irrepressibility is identical to those days of platform trainers and leopard print, both of which she still wears. “The stuff I wore when I was 19 has come back in fashion. And it fits,” she adds with a jokey smirk.

Did she have any wobbles turning 50 last year? “Definitely not! I was more worried turning 30, because I’d thought at 30 you’re old and I was going to have my life sorted, a house, kids.” In fact, she was single with one child and a divorce under her belt. “But I’ve never been afraid of my age. I don’t know what 50 is meant to feel or look like.”

Mask now removed, hair in tight bunches around her make-up-free face, she’s talking over Zoom from the San Fernando Valley in California, where she’s in the middle of judging America’s Got Talent (AGT), alongside Simon Cowell.

What most surprised my friends when I told them I’d be talking to Brown is that one of the most famous women in the world lives not in London, like the other Spices, let alone Los Angeles — her home for 15 years — but her native Leeds. Or, to be completely accurate, an area of outstanding natural beauty just outside the city. “It’s half an hour from my mum’s, ten minutes from my aunties and cousins.”

The £2.2 million farmhouse she shares with her third husband, 37-year-old hairdresser Rory McPhee, is surrounded by 15 acres of forest, with two goats, fifteen chickens, eight ducks and two rottweilers. “And we’re about to get two horses.” Does she stomp around in wellies? “Yeah and my hi-vis — the workers laugh at me because I don’t want to get covered in poo.” In a couple of weeks one of her best friends, the comedian Ruby Wax, is coming to stay. “Last time she visited she raided my wardrobe and took two of my Spice Girl leopard-print coats.”

Brown made the decision to relocate in 2019, having finalised her divorce from her “horrible, coercively controlled” marriage to the film producer Stephen Belafonte, the subject of her 2018 bestselling memoir, Brutally Honest (he has strongly and repeatedly denied her claims that he was abusive).

“My father was dying, and I hadn’t seen or spoken to him or my mum or anyone for a good part of nine years,” she says. “So I flew to England. My dad was in the hospice at death’s door, but thankfully he waited for me before passing away."

She brought her children, Phoenix, now 27 (from her first marriage to the dancer Jimmy Gulzar), Angel, now 18 (from a relationship with the film star Eddie Murphy) and Madison, now 14 (Belafonte’s daughter), with her. When it came to returning, “Angel said [Brown affects an American accent], ‘Mommy, why are we going back to America when all your family’s here?’ I’m like, ‘OK, good point. But you’re all California kids, do you really want to move to London with all the different weather?’ They were like, ‘Yeah! But not London — Leeds!’”

The younger two went to school in Leeds — “and it was brilliant. They found the weather funny: ‘Oh my God, there’s snow!’ It was quite sweet.”

Brown claims that after her expensive divorce and alleged financial abuse during her marriage to Belafonte she had only £700 to her name, so initially she had to move into her mother’s bungalow with her children and dog. “It was perfect, because then I had no choice but to mend the relationships with my mum, my sisters, my friends who didn’t know what I’d been going through. So it put our family back together.”

Since then she has rebuilt her career. “I’ve worked my arse off. I’m a working-class girl and I love earning my own money,” she says. She has competed in several international versions of The Masked Singer, the Netflix reality show Celebrity Bear Hunt and is now on her second — presumably lucrative — stint as an AGT judge. She also rallied three of the other four Spice Girls (Victoria “Posh” Beckham was the only one who stayed away) to reunite for a 13-date reunion tour in 2019, culminating in three sold-out nights at Wembley Stadium, its highest grossing engagement of the year.

All the same, Brown’s estimated wealth still lags far behind the other “girls” — an estimated £7 million, compared with Beckham’s £500 million with her husband, David; Geri Horner née Halliwell’s £440 million with Christian Horner, the former Red Bull Formula One team principal; Emma Bunton’s £24 million; and Melanie “Sporty Spice” C’s £24 million.

Unsurprisingly, Brown was said to be keenly pushing for a 30th anniversary reunion tour. Details were reportedly almost finalised, then last week she posted an Instagram clip of herself walking away from the camera in a thong bikini, captioned: “I’m walkin’ away from the NOISE… So if that’s what you’re bringing you can kiss my [peach emoji].”

This was interpreted as Brown’s response to tour plans falling through — news subsequently confirmed by Mel C.

“I wasn’t saying that. I was just flashing my bum because I’m 50, so why not?” But the tour’s definitely off? “Nothing’s happening,” she confirms flatly.

She puts the fact she’s still on bum-flashing form down to the product she’s promoting today: Revive Collagen Menopause Max, which comes in tiny purple sachets she takes daily.

Brown had just got back on her feet, post-Belafonte, when she was clobbered by the menopause: “I got hit with the brain fog, the doubt in yourself… night sweats.” Did she consider HRT? “No, I mean, I spoke to Emma [Bunton aka Baby Spice] about the menopause a few years ago, and she’s saying she’s got this really good consultant who helped her balance her oestrogen and progesterone, but that’s only because she has the money and the time to do that."

But HRT is available on the NHS? Brown doesn’t seem to accept this as a solution — pointing out few GPs have formal menopause training and many may be unsympathetic.

“Anyway, I don’t think I need [HRT], because aside from Revive, I’ve got a Himalayan salt sauna, infrared shower, an ice bath, it all helps,” she says. “Me and my husband even got a mattress with different sides, and mine’s on freezing cold."

She and McPhee married last year at St Paul’s Cathedral with Bunton in attendance (Mel C attended a subsequent ceremony in Marrakesh). After what she’d been through, was a third marriage a huge leap of faith? “Well, I’ve known Rory all my life, long before I was a Spice Girl. He’s a family friend.”

Still, it took her until around 2018 to clock him. “All my aunties and uncles were like,” her tone gets incredulous, “‘Quiet, safe Rory?!’ He keeps to himself. But he’s a very sweet guy, he’s from the same village I’m from, we’ve got the same humour, the same accent. Heidi [Klum, the supermodel and close friend] told me, ‘I’m getting married again’, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, what?’ But she met a guy from her village, they speak the same German [dialect]. I get it, it works."

Not that wedding bells were on the cards from the start. “When Rory and I [got] together, I said, ‘I’m not your girlfriend. I’m never getting married again and I’m never going to have kids. So if I were you, I would look somewhere else — but we could have fun.’”

Undeterred, McPhee proposed, first going to Brown’s father’s grave to ask for her hand in marriage. “I went, ‘Did he respond?’” She chortles. “Rory said, ‘No, but I felt like he was accepting.’”

McPhee was the first to read a draft of Brown’s bestselling memoir Brutally Honest, about her marriage to Belafonte, which came out in 2018. “He was like, ‘I can’t believe a man could treat a woman like that.’”

Numerous publishers rejected the manuscript, saying they’d only publish such a book if the author “had come out the other end [of the trauma]. But I’ll never come out. I’ll live side by side with this my entire life. I now have tools in place so I no longer jump if a door slams or someone yells at me.”

In 2022 Brown was made an MBE for services to charitable causes, specifically her work supporting survivors of domestic abuse. She’s a vocal patron of Women’s Aid.

“It took me ten years to figure out how I got there and why I couldn’t leave. I worried it would end my career. It’s embarrassing. I was riddled with so much shame and guilt. I’m a mother — how could I do this to my family? I preach girl power, yet I was girl powerless.”

Yet now Brown has rediscovered her mojo and has a new female cause to champion. “Since I was 19, my thing’s been supporting women and lifting them up. Menopause is something we should be talking about. My mum’s in her seventies, she’s never spoken to me about it, but she barely told me about periods. I mentioned menopause to her a couple of weeks ago and she went, ‘Oh, no, we don’t talk about that.’ I’m like, ‘Well, why don’t we?’ I’m making it my mission.”

Mel B is the new Global Ambassador for the Revive Collagen Menopause range;

Mel B’s perfect weekend:

Lie-in or workout?

Workout

Night in or night on the tiles?

Night in. You’ll struggle to get me out of the house unless I’m being paid for it

London or Leeds?

Leeds

Signature dish?

I don’t cook

Last thing you googled?

Comedy on YouTube. Peter Kay and Victoria Wood are my go-tos

Couldn’t get through the weekend without…

…my husband

Bless her, I love her.

Also, I think we forgot one detail about the girls who might be preventing them from going on tour: menopause. Mel B is going through it and apparently so is Emma. I would imagine the other girls, who are around the same age, are all going through it to some degree.

It's an interesting conversation and one we shouldn't shy away from. It does dis-regulate women's emotions and changes their bodies in ways men will never comprehend. I remember when my mum went through it and she was a totally different person during it and after. Obviously she is not a multimillionaire like the Spice Girls are who can afford health care that helps them, but I remember she was in so much pain, both emotional and physical... Sometimes she would turn on her friends on even us because she was in so much pain and would lash out.

So yeah... this is another piece of the puzzle in the current SG saga..

Thanks for posting, that's a nice interview!

“Nothing’s happening,” she confirms flatly. - not sure if Mel B has ever been that despondent about it. You could be right that personal circumstances could play into it and that it's not the right moment.

I had no idea Mel B knew Rory since "long before" the Spice Girls, which could suggest since he was born and she was a teenager!

Yes, menopause is possibly a factor stopping the reunion. But also, if the net worths stated in the article are true, one can see another reason why the three are keen, and the other two aren't.

Happy birthday to Miss B!

Twitter is having a full day out of these lol

Happy birthday Mel (belated!) ❤️

17 hours ago, Mr.X said:

Happy birthday to Miss B!

OMG

https://www.billboard.com/culture/tv-film/mel-b-interview-americas-got-talent-spice-girls-anniversary-1236256808/

I know Mel C released an excellent solo album recently, Sweat, so how about any new solo music from you?

I actually went to see her in concert and she dragged me up on stage and I was like, “oh God, Melanie, what are you doing?” We had an absolute blast and I think her album got to No. 3, which is one of her highest chart positions. She’s brilliant, she’s still doing her thing. You never know? I am in contact with a few songwriters in L.A., so let’s see. I’ll be back there for the live shows in August … hold this thought!

Please give it to us Mel

Wouldn't it be lovely if she released a third album and achieved a good position with it

Mel B was asked again on GMB about the reunion and who's making it not happen. She was struggling to keep her lips tight lol