E5: Nice Spice... or the Daughters From Hell?! Transcript

Oct 18, 2021

Steph: I mean, Bend It Like Beckham, come on.

 

Sinead: Yes, that movie is what defined his career.

 

[laughter]

 

Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders.

 

Sinead: Just to recap: last time we spent a lot of time talking about the Spice Girls in the media and some of their stumbles and some of their successes. So by this point, the spring 1997 to some degree, the girls or as an entity are like already master media manipulators. As we discussed, there was one media interview that even with the cost of flying the girls for these TV commercials they were doing, they could reach millions of people in these bustling markets.

This is sort of the beginning of we're starting to see the saturation of the Spice Girls just absolutely everywhere. And the sort of flipside is they start to have these run-ins with the paparazzi and their personal lives. So, in January 1997, the girls had a very unpleasant encounter with the paparazzi. Emma was celebrating her birthday at a club in London, and while using the bathroom she was accosted by paparazzi and had photos taken of her in the bathroom.

Yes, okay. Apparently they claim to be quote big fans of her and Mel C but then so like, at the time the girls didn't think a lot of it until the photo showed up in the Daily Star which is a tabloid which claimed they had exclusive access to her 21st birthday party when in actual fact they hadn't even been invited. 

 

Elyse: That's terrible

 

Megan: In the bathroom to like that's just...

Steph: Just an invasion of personal space for anybody like, it's the toilet

 

Megan: Let her go pee or poo or whatever she had to do

 

[laughter]

 

Elyse: Let her change that diva cup

 

Sinead: I think this may have predated diva cups

 

[laughter]

 

Elyse: It’s a principled stance

 

Sinead: Yeah, so basically this event mixed with the pressures of the ongoing spice mania and just like how saturated they were. This prompted Simon Fuller to hire a lawyer to deal with the press by the name of Gerrard Tyrell.

 

Cheryl: Tyrell is a commercial libel expert so he understands this idea that like the media needs the girls because they sell papers. They want to talk to the girls that's why they're like being, you know, horrid and stalking them and Tyrell builds relationships with paper management not actually journalists. He's particularly interested also in the intellectual property of the band. He quickly becomes the enemy of photographers because he would write agreements with paper management and with the photographers themselves to say you know, the girls own all the photos of themselves and that other than the agreed upon publication date, the images could not be used again. One of the things that he does at later events is he actually wanders around finding counterfeit Spice Girls t-shirts and actually sues them like “hey, this is counterfeit, and I'm their lawyer”

 

Elyse: What do you think he would have had to say about the Spice Mice at Northern Getaway?

 

[laughter]

 

Sinead: He would’ve been aghast.

 

Cheryl: Oh my god, 

 

Steph: Shutting down Northern Getaway.

 

Megan: Maybe that's what happened to Northern Getaway. Do we know?

 

Cheryl: I don’t think so.

 

Ashley: Or like, that's just why we can't find those shirts anymore.

 

Cheryl: Oh, my God 

 

Elyse: What a tragedy.

[Chimes]

 

Cheryl: Generally, his policy was pretty simple; if your publication created a pattern of reporting facts, the girls would “be there” for you to talk to them and he would even feed you stories.  This is a media management style that is still in use today, and it garnered the band nearly two years of continual press while he worked with them. This strategy really speaks to the depths of their team’s attempts to control and guide the narrative around the band.. And one of the things that Sinead and I did was we found some of the juicy tabloid stories that were coming out from ex boyfriends and friends. A lot of them were coming forward to the press trying to both share their stories, but also a lot of them were like, “Hey, we can make some money off of this”, too.

One of the stories that comes out in April of 1997 is from one of Emma's really early ex boyfriends, he went to the Daily Mirror and shared details about how she lost her virginity to him as a teenager and claimed she was obsessed with sex. The quote that Daily Mirror shared was “she liked it anytime, anyplace, anywhere. Her place, my place. The pub car, park, bushes, playgrounds, it was great fun.”

 

Elyse: What a whore. [laughter]  That's... that's horrendous.

 

Sinead: I'm putting a picture in now, this accompanied the original Emma boyfriend story.

 

Elyse: This must have been.... it must have been so devastating at her age because I feel like at like 30, you know, it would be sure maybe embarrassing or whatever. You don't want your folks to read that but it's not the end of the world. But she was so young and probably still just figuring out her own sexuality and to have that stuff like, true or not, just splashed across pages. I can't imagine

Steph: She still lived at home with her mom. 

 

Elyse: Mortifying, I just looked at the picture and it just sounds like such a great night.

 

Sinead: I mean, that's the thing is she's just being a normal person who likes fucking.

Elyse: So it's a photo of Emma and she's looking very cutesy in like a little sort of baby doll dress. The title says my Martini, which I don't know if that's related to the photo or not, it doesn't seem to make a lot of contextual sense, but it's just a good old photo of cute little Baby's face. And then a pull quote from an article that says “she looked so cute down in pints of snake bite, then she dragged me into the bushes”, which is like what a great day. I don't know what snake bite is, but there was

 

Steph: Sounds like it’s a beer judging by pints.

Elyse: Great point. Great pint..

 

Steph: I mean, add a slice of pizza and you're doing great.

 

Sinead: Yeah, basically. I mean, it's really such a huge violation of her privacy to like, bring up how she lost her virginity. And he also really, creepily was like, well, we started dating when she was 15. But I waited until she was 16. Before they had sex, which I was just like, gross. And like also, he was paid for the story, so he's just a fucking asshole. But yeah, and

 

Elyse: So creepy. 

 

Sinead: It's super creepy. Like it's the creepiest vibes, that episode, and unfortunately for Emma, she had a second boyfriend who went to the tabloids also. So the Sun reported that this second boyfriend was actually going from outlet to outlet asking for 30,000 pounds to share his story. And so the Sun turned it down. But then the story did later appear in the Mirror. The second guy had been around when the band was starting up. So he talked a lot about how Geri and Mel B were really raunchy, and like they teased him about having sex with Emma and they asked him about his penis size. He also claimed to be Emma's first love, which, okay, and she dumped him as the band started to get successful. And he was like, really bitter about it.

 

[laughter]

 

Elyse: Something you just said made me wonder, like, I wonder how much of this sort of, quote unquote scandal here, which obviously isn't a scandal at all, but how much of it is because it's just the shaming of women who enjoy sex, or how much of it is because she's betraying her brand? Like, whether consciously or unconsciously, like she's branded as like the good one, the wholesome one. And I wonder how much of it is just failure to be on brand. And if it would have been as big of a deal if they were talking about Mel B or Geri.

 

Cheryl: It's also funny you say that because I was about to get into... we found some examples of like, Victoria's exes is going to the press as well. And whenever they're talked about, they're all specifically talked about by like, how they have shitty jobs, or like shitty jobs in comparison to like her being Posh spice, like, Mark Wood, the first boyfriend who goes to the press, who was actually Victoria's fiance, she wanted to like walk that in before her career took off, he's described as like he installed security systems. And so the sun runs this piece, and he claims I love Toria, but she only loved herself and her career,

 

Elyse: But that makes me think that it is about being pissed off that they're betraying the identity that we've assigned to them because like for Baby Spice, her whole thing is that she's wholesome and young. For Posh, her whole thing is that she's elitist and in both of those situations, it's because you know, Baby Spice is not behaving wholesomely and Victoria is not behaving like an elitist. She's dating, you know, people working in trades

 

Steph: Just an average Joe.

 

Elyse: Totally Yeah,

 

Sinead: yeah, with Victoria, her next boyfriend, Stuart Bilton, who also went to the press, he was described as, quote, a hunk on the dole, which means a man on welfare. 

 

Steph: Yeah.

 

Megan: Yeah, a hunk on welfare. 

 

[laughter]

 

Sinead: And he talked about her childhood history of being bullied. It's funny because Victoria's are about how unglamorous these men are and she even herself claimed later on she said “it was so un-rock and roll” in comparison to the stories of the other girls, that all that got talked about Victoria was that she liked money and she dated poor men and she had got bullied as a child like whereas Emma's were like these like sexy like interesting quote unquote interesting like rock and roll kind of stories.

Although still awful, like in all their cases, they were just being betrayed so much, and it was so clear that they really needed like more significant like media representation because there were probably just so many people who grew up with them and were like, oh, maybe I could make a buck off of my story about them.

 

Megan: This is making me think,what guys I have dated, if I became famous…

 

Steph: What they would say?

Megan: Well, not what they would say but like, I'm just wondering what type of person sells like, you know, even if it ended poorly, obviously you cared about this person at some point, like.. Are there that many people in everyone's past that are terrible and would sell their personal life for money?

 

Steph: Now with social media that changes the game. Like, say you got famous tomorrow, we all have Instagrams and whatever. So we're kind of already in control of what immediately would be snatched up. So you're gonna say something, I don't know, some random salacious story if there's nothing to prove. It's like pics, or it didn't happen. They could say some story and you could just be like, no.

 

[laughter]

 

Sinead: I think you're exactly right. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And this reminds me actually of something Cheryl has said on previous a previous episode, I believe, which was the Spice Girls were before the internet, but their whole lives are on the internet. And like that is such a weird timeframe where like you know, Cheryl, and I can spend so many hours digging on the internet for stuff about them. But when they were doing all of this stuff as 20-21 year olds, the internet was like something for nerds. Like it was a side note. It was not what a 21 year old was spending all their time doing. And I mean, their early careers, so much of that is about hustling and being in bars and being around and having physical meetings like forcing themselves into meeting people, you know, it was way before the technology of 2021.

 

Cheryl: Which brings us to maybe the most salacious tabloid story of the entire Spice Girls career on February 3, Geri Halliwell's early glamour shots, which is British speak for classy nudes, were published by the Daily Mirror. The photos were taken six years before on the island of Majorca by Spanish photographer Sebastian Emmanuelle. He gets super gross and says “she was so sexy. I just thought, oh my god, I have photographed many girls, but they are all so skinny. Geri had a fantastic figure with huge breasts. I am used to naked girls, but she was so special.”

 

Sinead: Which she's very thin…. 1997 was so fucked. I'm going to share in the chat this original spread that started all the headlines, and you will see a very thin woman.

 

Elyse: I just think the idea of calling her special because of how good she looks naked is so disgusting. And like Silence of the Lambs. It's just so creepy. And off putting. I just opened it up, She looks great. 

 

Sinead: The thing that catches me is her face. She's just looks so young. 

 

Steph: She looks so young.

 

Elyse: The thing that catches me is the quote below with the photo of the photographer, saying “I've never seen a body like it. I was fighting to control myself” that - 

 

[gagging sounds]

 

Elyse: That is not the most professional thing I've heard. 

 

Sinead: It's disgusting.

 

Megan: Rapey

 

Sinead: Yes, it's rapey. 

Elyse: It is and I can say to you, so she addresses her glamour photos pretty early on in her book. So it's been a little while since I read it. So I'll get the specific drawing so I'll keep it general. But when Geri was doing glamour photos, it started off in a very gradual way I think as it probably does with many people.

And she was never sort of seeking the opportunity I don't believe to do like full nude spreads. It just kind of happened with different photographers pushing her comfort limits. And there was one shoot and I'm not sure if it was this one perhaps, you guys know, but there was one shoot where she regretted the level of nudity that she went to and she really didn't want the photos to be released and she addressed it with the photographer after the shoot. She was very uncomfortable during a lot of the shoots and I can't say whether or not this was one of them, as much as she was promised a great future in it. She was not into it.

 

[Chimes]

 

Sinead: Within the band, this particular scandal actually went down really badly. There was a lot of tension. So I guess at some point before the girls had become more famous, Geri had told them that she had done some of these photo shoots. But apparently according to other members of the band, she glossed over the extent like the amount of pictures she took and also how graphic they were. The Spice Girls had a huge fan base of children whose parents likely did not take kindly to this and they were really concerned like both management and the other girls were really concerned that these photos would have a huge impact on their success. Mel B was really upset with her for not being more upfront in the past about it. But in her second autobiography which she wrote in her late 30s she writes that she really understood why Geri had taken the photos, like the whole situation of why that could have happened and that wasn't really her fault and it definitely wasn't the media's right to just slut shame her for working or existing in an industry that's like already so exploitative, which we all know is just a fact.

 

Megan: Obviously I don't know the details but not that I'm against Geri or the other Spice Girls because I think everything you just said there Sinead is totally on point. Taking it out on her like you said, it's not her fault, but like I totally get the concern given their like young fans and like probably a lot of them wanting to grow up and be like pop stars like the Spice Girls and like, oh, maybe this is how you get there. Do you know what I mean? So I totally get the concern but like pointing fingers at Geri, that's a little unfair.

Sinead: So apparently it's because they felt that she had misrepresented how many pictures there were, because they did go through media training and stuff like that, like Cheryl and I have talked about before. And this was something that had come up, like, will there be anything you know, that could come up about you or whatever. And she really downplayed it, which I think I don't really blame her for doing that at all. Like, I think that's a very understandable impulse. And I doubt she knew at the time how famous they were going to be, or how sought after prior stuff of them would be. If you're just a normal person, you don't think anyone's ever going to be digging around for photos of you later.

 

  Apparently, they said if they had known it wouldn't have been like, so shocking when it did come out. But I think it kind of speaks to Elyse's point about maybe Geri was ashamed of it, she was uncomfortable about it, she didn't want to go back to it. And I think that's a really understandable human thing for a 21 year old girl to be managing and thinking about, which is always something we should keep in mind: they are very, very young.

 

Elyse: Totally. I think like, even though it was technically consensual, you know, she was paid for it. She clearly knew, you know, there was camera, just take her clothes off, you have to imagine that like, knowing she wasn't loving it in the moment, probably had some regrets about it later, I think that carries like its own type of trauma, because trauma is like such a spectrum that I feel like she...yeah, like she probably wasn't acting totally rationally about it.

 

[Chimes]

 

Megan: So what was the response to the photos?

Sinead: I think it just made them more popular. Like everything, like every single Spice Girls story, that you think it's gonna have some sort of catastrophic impact. Instead, it just makes them more famous.

 

Cheryl: Yeah. And there's an entire industry making money off of saying that shit about them. You know, I think going back to like, why they needed a media strategist who was on their team, it literally just came down to like, I understand you're here to make money. But if you were going to spread lies, then we're not going to work with you.

 

Sinead: It's an interesting thing, too, because it was also making the girls very rich. And that is sort of the double edged sword: they were capitalizing off the fact that they looked the way they did, and they presented the way they did, and it made them incredibly wealthy. The other flip side of the coin of the media strategist was because they wanted to maximize their exposure while minimizing their pain, but of course, if you're going to maximize your exposure, because you're selling so much stuff that we will get into later that is going to have a blowback, the overexposure of you constantly being consumed as a product, because you're making yourself a product to be consumed. I'm not saying they deserve any of it. I wish that we could have discussions in the media that are way evolved beyond this, but it is interesting because they really wanted the fame and the boomerang effect of it, I think was very hard for them to deal with.

 

[Chimes]

 

Cheryl: Jumping off of that comment about the girls being a product, I think we need to take a minute and talk about one of the most beloved products that comes out of this time period, Posh and Becks.. So during this time, the girls are in the tabloids all over the place. Simon Fuller, he's telling Victoria “you need someone famous. What you need is a footballer” he's quoted as saying in her biography. Victoria's like “I'm not interested in this idea. I don't do sports, footballers are boorish, I think the young men are obnoxious”. In March 1997, Mel C and Victoria are invited to a Manchester United game and they go to the players lounge for some postgame schmoozing. They’re Spice Girls, they get to go wherever they want. And Victoria and David really hit it off. This is actually their second time meeting. The first time she tells him “good game” and he says “I hope you like it, Victoria” and then like that's it. She gets a little giddy, but that's like she doesn't know football, but they really hit it off this time around. David asked Victoria out to dinner that evening in Manchester. And she can't stay cuz she's a Spice Girl and she has to leave for America in about two days. She asked him to like you know, like, could we do another time? He says “I train every day” and she's like, “even Sunday?” He says “Yes, I'm a footballer and I train every day”. So she hands her number over and she says I'm telling you Mr. David Beckham if you don't ring me, I'm going to kick you in the bollocks next time I see you and then she leaves the players lounge. 

 

Elyse: That is awesome. I mean threats of violence bad whatever. That is amazing.

 

[laughter]

 

Sinead: But no, they're insanely famous now. I think Victoria has something like 60 million Instagram followers. And David has, what, 250 million Instagram followers? It's actually insane, which he’s a global level footballer like, you know, is well known but she is so much more famous than the other girls now and I mean their tabloid drama over the years was pretty wild. But that is for a different podcast. 

 

[Chimes]

 

Sinead: In February of 97 the Girls were back at it in the studio, they shot two music videos that month for “Mama” and for “Who do you think you are.'' The video for mama actually features the girls' mums, which is an interesting choice to elevate them publicly because Emma's mum had been accosted while teaching her karate class by paparazzi, and it ended up in the papers. So there was definitely some behind the scenes tension about the mums not necessarily wanting that level of spectacle like coming into their personal lives. Which again goes back to why they hired Tyrell as their lawyer. They really needed someone to protect like everyone in their sphere, it wasn't just the five of them. “Mama” is a pretty low key video they shot in London over one day, the song is one of their slower cornier ones as you guys all know. It doesn't have the same dancing or high energy vibe as the other videos. The girls' mums get tributed and featured throughout the video, also, the video also has a segment with lookalike child actors pretending to be Spice Girls playing together. The thing that it reminds me of is we kind of mentioned you guys before that they used to kind of pretend like they had known each other for longer and that they weren't like producer-created. I kind of wondered if this was like kind of adding to that lore indirectly because if you're just a little girl watching this you might come away from that video thinking “Oh, they grew up together and they always were gonna like be pop stars together”

 

Elyse: That's a really sweet concept and it's good marketing. I totally would have thought that, I may have thought that I don't know.

 

Ashley: Well, especially if you factor in how many young girls were bonding over the Spice Girls, and as we all know, as we've discussed before like pretending like they were the Spice Girls. Seeing a video like that it's like oh like that could be us you know?

 

Sinead: Absolutely and they they love their kid fan base, like really love the kids who are fans of them. This was a very like appropriate song and video that was like very child-friendly. I think down the line they ended up like performing “Mama” with a children's choir at like different like charity events and stuff like that. It was very much like their family friendly child’s song and like the kids sang - like a huge choir of kids - would sing with them on stage.

 

Elyse: I hate that with every fiber of my being and I know that I would bawl my eyes out if I saw it.

 

[Chimes]

 

Cheryl: So in contrast to “Mama” the other side of the double A is “Who do you think you are” the video for this is filmed at around the same time that “Mama” is, also in London. It features the girls singing and dancing with a radiant background filmed by a camcorder, as well as playing in front of a crowd in a club. The club portion was actually filmed in what Mel C called “a really mad club, a real dive, the toilets were horrible”.

 

Sinead: So yeah this double A-side single “mama”/”Who do you think you are” was immediately hugely successful on the charts with the girls once again sitting at number one in the UK and Europe. They overturned a record; they were the first group to have four consecutive number one hits since the Jackson Five. So yeah, it's pretty intense. And like many of the girls’ singles, the songs get a pretty mixed critical reception. In their review of “Aama” The Daily Mirror exclaimed, “Yuck, we don't want our Spice Girls sweet, ta very much, they should concentrate on the raunch”.

 

Megan: Okay, I don't find the Spice Girls raunchy, really at any point.

 

Sinead: They were for 1997 like, I think it's a tough thing in retrospect, because our culture is significantly more open about sex and like women expressing sexuality like in a way that in 97 they weren't. I mean, Madonna was but then it was like ubiquitous with Madonna, if you were a female artist who was expressing sexuality, you would just constantly be compared with Madonna. Whereas the Spice Girls were kind of making a new mould, but I agree with you, I don't, in hindsight, none of it's that risque.

 

Megan: The word raunch just has such, I don't know, connotation to it in my mind. Like I would never like if someone asked me to choose five adjectives to describe the Spice Girls like that would not be one of them.

 

Steph: Like when I think of like raunchy now it's like WAP, like that is pretty overtly sexual. And Spice Girls are not remotely in the same ballpark. 

 

Sinead: No.

 

Elyse: No, but I remember them being maybe like, I wouldn't have thought of the word as raunchy, but I remember my mom being really concerned that I was listening to them and watching them. I picked up on cues from adults in my life I was like oh, there's something happening here that some people are concerned with and I think a lot of the time it was just as simple as like, there was a lot of midriff action. They were, you know, they wore some revealing clothes, Baby Spice did some stuff with that chupa chup. Like, I think that they're

 

Ashley: Well how much of that do you think is from like the sexualization of Geri though, like that it might have just had a lot to do with even just how Geri was treated in the media alone.

 

Elyse: Totally could be because I remember like that was not on my radar at all as a kid obviously, like I was like seven to I guess 10 when they were really really big so that totally could be it like. It may have been a whole other media identity that I hadn't been exposed to.

 

Megan: So true. I remember asking my mum cuz until we watched it together, which like begat at this podcast, I had never seen...sorry i’m getting all biblical words on you there.

 

Steph: We love the Bible on this podcast, famously.

 

Megan: I'd never seen the Spiceworld movie right and I'm pretty sure it was one of those things that my mom would not have let us watch growing up. I asked her and I said was it because it you thought it was like sexual or like what was it? She told me she thought it was just dumb and like, uneducational and would rot our brains like, you know, like cartoons or like TV.

 

[laughter]

[Chimes]

 

Sinead: To continue about the critical reception of these two tracks, Entertainment Weekly also described “Mama” as “a fearlessly corny ballad”, which is absolutely true. But I do think there's a place for fearlessly corny ballads. I mean, we all have a soft spot for our own picks.

 

Cheryl: I just realized most groups would write their fearlessly corny ballad about like a romantic relationship and the Spice Girls fearlessly corny ballad is about their moms, which is kind of like, cool. Go on

 

Sinead: You're right. Yeah. And “Who Do You Think You Are” the other single on there that was released, obviously a very different song. It was praised as “a full on disco number that would get to number one, even if it wasn't by the Spice Girls”. Other outlets, I think said that it was just mediocre. Which is very funny to me. Because “Who Do You Think You Are” is on so many Best of the 90s lists. And it's my personal favorite Spice song.

 

Steph: It’s also remixed so much, you could go out somewhere, I mean, I guess not now, theoretically in the recent before times of COVID, you could go out and you could hear a remixed version of “Who Do You Think You Are”

 

Sinead: It did not get a lot of praise at the time, but it's one of their most enduring songs to date. And this is 25 years later.

 

Cheryl: It's funny that we talked about this as one of their most enduring tracks because it nearly became the girl's first music focused scandal. A publisher claimed the band actually misused a sample of theirs and filed a suit against the group that should have probably at least made the music pages and a couple of entertainment columns. But according to the words of a Virgin insider, who did not give their name to anyone, which is very annoying, “it never made the headlines. Gerard killed it.” So Gerard Tyrell, the libel lawyer, came in and arranged actually a huge payout for this publisher. I was trying for like a good several hours in the days of the digital sphere and like you should be able to find something like this and like I cannot find the name of this person.

 

Sinead: Yeah, I also looked and we have a lot of different archives at our disposal. I think this little point just proves how well Tyrell was at doing his job. And keeping them as scandal free as possible so that people could just focus on them being cute and having fun.

 

Elyse: What was the part of the song that they supposedly sampled?

 

Sinead: we literally cannot find any information, which it just, we know it happened for sure. So just truly like this guy is a very powerful man. And he made it go away.

 

Cheryl: It's a big enough payout that even in like the light of like, Spice Girls news still makes money. So like you could probably if you were the person with this, like you could probably go to someone and be like, hey, like I have the suit or whatever. And like nothing. Has not come out. Either a huge payout, or a very binding contract.

 

Steph: Or some combination of the two.

 

Sinead: Yeah, so the next big exciting thing that the girls did, just shortly after these two singles, top the charts. They were invited to perform on SNL in April of 1997. And the performance poses a big problem for them. Because first of all, I don't know if you guys have been keeping track, but the Spice Girls have barely ever performed live. And many of their previous performances had been lip synced with a recorded backing track, which they couldn't do on SNL. So they were given five days with the SNL house band and they legitimately were really practicing and really performing to do this live, not lip synced. And the result was a fine performance and zero headlines because nothing that exciting happened. But they did perform for real on SNL and I mean that's a big deal for the American market obviously.

 

Cheryl: After this appearance, the girls go on another one of their many promotion tours of Eastern Asia. This market was actually identified really early on in their careers as having many young people with disposable income, making it right for a teen pop group to show up and shake it up. All of these promotional trips are media focused, they're focused on getting interviews with a huge number of views. So this particular tour includes appearances on MTV Taiwan, Sunday Sunday night in Seoul, South Korea, which is like one of their big variety programs, and a CD signing at Tower Records in Malaysia. This is a fourth press tour of this region since they really started doing press tours seriously, and there's actually two more press focus trips to that area before the end of 1997. This again is a really affordable way to get the girls' faces out there.

Even with the costs of flying the group out there, booking in a hotel, hopping around the region, it's still way cheaper than doing a concert tour and staying top of mind in that media market that regular media appearances to promote their singles in their albums. On the other hand, this is also yet again another massive demand on the girl's time and stamina to try to stay on top of a part of the world that they don't live in, but they're selling records.

On the return from that trip, the girls were invited to perform at the Prince's Trust charity concert in May 1997. This is the biggest live performance they've done in the UK at the time. It's both for a huge auditorium, and also I believe this event is also televised. The Prince's Trust is a charity that was started by Prince Charles in the 1970s. It helps vulnerable young people get their lives on track and provides services and training programs for youth. And so the event was held at the Opera House in Manchester, a huge venue and in the most 90s moment of all time, their performance were introduced by American Friends actress Jennifer Aniston.

 

Sinead: [laughing] Like they literally flew Rachel out to say one line on the stage. Literally like she comes on the stage with Joanne Lumley, right? And she's like, “don't we all need friends” and then Rachel walks out and then it's like, “hey, Rachel” and then Rachel's like “it's the Spice Girls” and the Spice Girls come on the stage.

Cheryl: Like Joanne Lumley is a huge actress in her own right.

 

Steph: Yeah!

 

Cheryl: The Spice Girls perform “Say You’ll Be There” and “Mama”. It was a fine performance, the crowds were pretty sedate for a Spice gig. But actually it's their antics afterwards with Prince Charles that grab even more headlines for the group. 

 

Steph: Oh yeah didn’t they squeeze his butt?

 

Elyse: [laughter] Geri patted it.

 

Sinead: So yes, they met Prince Charles. I don't know why they're so deferential to him because he's such an asshole, but Mel B and Geri both breached royal protocols by giving him big kisses on his cheeks, which left lipstick on his face. Apparently Mel B further advised him that he should get his tongue pierced. [laughter] Geri told him that he was very sexy and like Elyse was saying Geri was reported to have pinched his bum but she disputed it saying that she had given him a little pat instead. And then afterwards in a gossip column Mel B was quoted as saying that his bomb was “a bit wobbly”.

 

[laughter]

 

Elyse: Of course it was

 

Sinead: For some reason Geri defends him and says wasn't that bad?

 

Elyse: It's because she's such a flirt. Not even know like no, it's great. Jerry

 

Steph: Geri wants to be friends with the Royals so she wouldn't diss it. But we all know that family is not working out.

 

Sinead: If you want to look at the spice chat, I'm just gonna send you guys a picture but sorry Elyse, continue with what you were saying.

 

Elyse: I was just gonna say if people are interested in it, I have a first person account from Geri in that moment

 

Sinead: we would love it. 

 

Elyse: Okay, do you want to do picture first?

 

Sinead: No, you do your account and then we’ll talk about the picture.

Elyse: Okay, so Geri says that the big reason she did it is because she has a really big problem with authority and rules. And so right before they went to meet him, they got instructions and these were the instructions they got and I'm going to try really hard not to slip into an offensive British accent. But it says you should address Prince Charles as Your Royal Highness. This is coming from a palace aide. You may curtsy and if His Royal Highness offers his hand you may shake it. On no other account are you to touch the prince. [laughter]

And so immediately Geri’s like well I’m gonna fucking touch his butt, that's just what's gonna happen. And so she says as he reached me, I pulled him forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek, which left a big red lipstick smudge but at the same time, I gently patted his bum, a very Spanish thing to do. The kiss caused quite a stir.

So yes, I think it was a very sort of playful, warm little moment but not not as gropey as the tabloids would have us believe.

 

Sinead: So if you guys want to look at the picture you can see he’s delighted, even though he does not deserve any of his attention but whatever.

 

Ashley: He kind of looks scared though. 

 

[laughter]

 

Megan: He’s not used to anyone touching him.

 

[laughter]

 

Sinead: He’s a bitch.

 

Steph: He’s like nobody's supposed to touch me, you can see the lipstick on his cheeks.

 

Sinead: I think that they have touched him more than his own mum ever did.

 

[laughter]

 

Elyse: Guaranteed.

 

Cheryl: I also think it’s weird that like Girl Power doesn't include not flirting with - 

 

Sinead: Princess Diana?

 

Cheryl: Yeah! Not flirting with dudes we know are terrible to women.

Sinead: At this point in time the British public knows that Charles has had a long term affair with Camilla they know that Charles and Diana are about to be - 

 

Steph: I think they're already divorced 

 

Cheryl: Their divorce was finalized a year earlier 

 

Steph: Yeah, they're already divorced. Okay, because Diana is gonna…. die soon.

 

Sinead: It's not a spoiler, we know.

 

[laughter]

 

Elyse: Oh god.

 

[chimes]

 

Sinead: So when this whole thing went down with Prince Charles and that ridiculous picture with lipstick on his face and him looking as happy as a pig in shit, they seem like innocuous to us but like the Royals themselves and Royal watchers are like psychotically devoted to their make-believe protocols. They seriously are very serious about it. So following the concert there were some scandalized headlines about their behavior. My personal favorite headline that I saw was  “nice spice or the daughters from hell” care of The Liverpool Daily News. There were people who this solidified for them that the Spice Girls were bad. Um, however, I mean, as is the case with much of the Spice Girls pattern, this likely only solidified their fun and edgy appeal and  their reputation for being disruptive towards traditions. Their natural inclination to be cheeky, mixed with like their powerhouse legal and strategic teams had them perfectly placed to stay in the headlines and stay in the center of pop culture consciousness. Which we will just come back to you over and over again because they kept doing it.

 

Ashley: That's where we'll leave it today. Thank you so much for listening. Spice Invaders is hosted by Sinead O'Brien, Cheryl Stone, Elyse Maxwell, Stephanie Smith, and Megan Arppe-Robertson. It's researched and written by Sinead O'Brien and Cheryl Stone, and produced and edited by me, Ashley McDonough. 

 

To see any visuals we talked about in this episode, as well as bonus content, be sure to follow us on instagram at @spiceinvaderspod. Thank you to Lukus Benoit for composing our theme song.

 

Transcript created by Kevin Gontovnick