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How absolutely fabulous it is to
be a Spice Girl. To wear the Spice Girl ring from
Tiffany's ('It was Geri's idea: they've got "Spice" engraved
on one side and "One
of Five" on the other')! To be globally acclaimed in your 20s (Brit
Awards)! To be
rich (L80,000 a week) and famous (tabloid column inches day after day)!
To be a
role model (Girl Power), and a representative of your generation (Youth
Vote)! If
you're a Spice Girl, princes dote on you. Politicians fawn on you. Paparazzi
depend
on you. Primary schoolchildren want to be you.
And of the five little Spice Girls, how even more absolutely fabulous
to be Victoria
Adams: numero uno in the Spice Girl popularity polls. She has the best
nickname
(Posh), the best car (Mercedes SLK) and the best boyfriend (David Beckham),
from
the best team (Manchester United). Becks is a joy to behold as he displays
the best
right foot in the Premier League, not to mention all his other physical
attributes, plus
he doesn't kiss and tell, plus he buys her fabulous presents from the
best shops
(a silver and gold Catier Tank watch to match his own).
Other Spice Girls have problems, worrying little niggles which they have
to circumvent
or rise above. Victoria doesn't. She doesn't have a past, like Ginger
Spice, so there are
no nude pictures popping up. She doesn't have a horrible tongue screw
clanking around
her mouth, like Scary. She doesn't have 'the bum of a 41-year-old' (Daily
Mail), like Baby,
or a wardrobe full of dreary nylon trackie bottoms with Adidas written
all over them, like
Sporty. She doesn't - it's true - have the dazzling smile displayed by
all the other Spice
Girls, which shows off their brilliant white teeth and faultless orthodontics,
but what the
hell? Victoria's learned to pout for her publicity pictures like a moody
supermodel,
smouldering away with mouth closed.
Anyway, smiling or unsmiling, Posh Spice has all the best clothes. 'Prada
and Gucci!
Prada and Gucci!' she says, as though they were joined at the hip like
Dolce &
Gabbana. She's leaning back on the sofa in the Abbey Road studios, looking
utterly sweet
and half-naked after the prevailing fashion this summer, in a black jacket
(Gucci), a red
microslip (high street: 'I wanted a nightie dress'), no bra and a G-string
('I always wear
G-strings'). She wears very heavy make-up for a girl in her 20s, right
down to the brown
cheek contouring and bronzing powder.
She did a fashion flounce for me, removing her stiletto (patent pewter
Gucci with steel
spikes for heels) and raising her foot waist-high, so I could check out
her painted toenails.
'Black's the colour, dahling!' As she was being fitted into couture gowns
at the Ritz in Paris,
Tatler's stylists had told her nail polish 'must be black, silver, gold
or blood-red). Her
toenails were none of these. 'Ooh, I'm breaking the Tatler rule today.
This is a very, very
dark brown. But you can say it was black.'
Karl's people had organised a seat for her at the Chanel couture show.
'It was right in the
front row, and it had a little gold thing on it saying "Posh"!'
she said, eyes sparkling. She'd
been dying to sit in it, on client side, among the ageing millionaires'
widows with their taut
skin and hard eyes. Young clients are a rarity in couture: especially
young clients with
enough purchasing power of their own to buy the hand-built couture artworks
at L30,000 a
pop. But alas, she didn't make the show. Didn't have the time. Eight hours
in the Ritz being
fitted into John Galliano's Dior corsets and Lacroix's sumptuous gowns
eats into your busy
Spice Girl life. She was amazed by the corsets and awed by the runway
models' resilience
and professionalism. So much underpinning, so many layers. 'I felt about
50 stone with all
them layers on,' she said, spraying around her Hertfordshire vowels and
her north London
syntax with feeling.
Let's get this Posh thing out of the way, shall we? Victoria Adams may
well be 'posh' so far
as the tabloids are concerned (big house in Cheshunt, swimming-pool, Dad
did the school
run in his Roller, siblings are equally smartly named Louise and Christian),
but her speech
rhythms are not what you'd call Sloaney. A few examples. Victoria on the
Spice Girl
chemistry: 'It's a vibe thing. When we get in the studio we all vibe off
each other.' Victoria
on the media: 'I never read that piece in The Spectator. I don't ready
hardly anything.'
Victoria on the Prince of Wales: 'When we met Charles we was all really,
like, cheeky with
him. And at the end of the day, prince or no prince, he really does sit
on the toilet like
everybody else. You just got to picture him with nothing on.'
She rolls her eyes. 'Everybody meets me and they say, "Why are you
called Posh Spice?"
And I say, "Listen, I don't speak that badly! It's only 'cos I'm
tired, for a start"' She was
brought up in Hertfordshire by her parents, Jackie and Tony. Her dad runs
an electrical
distribution company (Distributing what? 'Oh, all sorts of electrical
bits. Lightbulbs.
Computers. All over the world'). He bought his Rolls-Royce once he made
his money
and famously took Victoria to school in it, though she begged him to take
her in the
van instead (He just said, "Oh, get in the car." Now of course,
I'd want him to take me
right up to the front door').
She was picked on at her local school, and not just because of the Roller.
She was
well-behaved and smartly turned-out by an affectionate and aspirational
mother who
arranged after-school Brownies and ballet classes for Victoria to shine
in. 'I used to get
on with my work. I used to be at school on time. I wasn't round the back
of the school sheds
having a fag or drinking or having loads of boyfriends - I didn't even
have a boyfriend then.
I was really well-behaved and that isn't the cool thing to be. I was totally
straight.'
In so far as she has a home at all - apart from the first-class hotels
and rented Spice Girls
houses and the looming possibility of overseas tax shelters - it's still
in Cheshunt among
her tightly-knit family ('My sister's best friend, and my brother is too').
Her mum keeps her
vast scrapbooks and deals with fans. 'My mum said, "I've given you
a nice name and I don't
want it shortened", and I think you take over your parents' values,
don't you? Even the
way they vote [Conservative].' She said that sometimes, at home, she was
called Tor by
her family. 'But that's very posh,' I say, thinking of all the Sloaney
Tors I meet, and she
asks excitedly, 'Is it? My boyfriend calls me Tor as well, Is that posh?'
The two stories that all the tabloids would kill for are 'Spice Girls
Break Up' and 'Posh
Spice Marries ManU Star', so I did my best, but she spent the entire interview
fending off,
with practised ease, the slightest hint of either one. The Spice Girl
gang is notoriously
outrageous and naughtily behaved when their Girl Power is five against
one and they can
smear princes with lipstick and pinch their bottoms and ('It's easy when
there's five of you').
So do Spice Girls row, and bitch at each other? Do they fight? Oh but
of course they do.
'Everybody wants to write, everybody wants to have a go at singing, everybody
wants to
have an opinion. We're all different and we've got different tastes musically.
We have
flaming rows about tiny things, bits of words that we want to put in lyrically.'
But Spice
Girls know how to kiss and make up. 'Right from day one we've had an American
attitude.
If there's something wrong, we're just open about it. It sounds disgustingly
sick,' she says
composedly, 'but we're more like sisters than anything. We've travelled
all over the world
together, we've lived together, we've written songs together: you become
so close with
one another.'
She's on a sugar-and-spice roll here: 'At the end of the day, it's all
about respect. Five
heads are better than one,' she begins. 'Five heads are better than two...'
but I nip in
with a Beckham question before we have to plod through the rest of the
maths. Is she
looking forward to being a football wife? She gives me a scornful look
and says: 'Well
I don't intend to dye my hair blonde.' She says: 'Some reporter came round
to our
house and asked me about being a football wife - he was comparing me to
Sheryl
Gascoigne. I couldn't believe it.'
But what was all that wedding-dress business in the newspapers? 'Oh!'
she said.
'I'd bought a dress for a show I was doing, and I needed it altered. So
I took it to my
mum's friend's shop, which is a bridal shop.' So, Victoria exits a bridal
shop, a quick
paprazzo takes a picture, and lo - 'Posh Spice Marries David Beckham'
exclusives roll
through the presses. She was somewhat miffed. 'What made me most upset
is I thought,
"My goodness - if I was going to get married, if I was buying a wedding
dress...'
She's too polite to finish the sentence, so I will: 'I wouldn't buy one
from the local
high street.' Instead she says: 'I mean, no disrespect - but... you know!'
Yes, we know,
Victoria. Miuccia Prada and Tom Ford would be on the line in seconds,
not to mention
your new best friends Christian and Karl and John.
A football wife maybe - but she'll never become a football fan. The Theatre
of Dreams
passes Victoria completely by, and she'd have a hard time comparing notes
with
United diehards on, say, Beckham's 60-yard Goal of season Kick from his
own half at
Selhurst Park. 'I call what he does football competitions. I can never
remember what
they're supposed to be. Football games? Football matches. Oh well, it's
all a
performance, innit?' She laughs and puts a luvvie voice on: 'You got a
show tonight?
Performing tonight?'
She says: 'I like him for him and I don't care what he does as long as
it makes him
happy.' So she isn't thinking of moving to Manchester? She pulls a face.
'Not many
nice shops in Manchester. No Prada and Gucci in Manchester.' Maybe Becks
should
move to Celtic, then, and she could shop in Glasgow? She pulls another
face (and
who would blame her?) and says silkily, 'Or Italy.' Oh, now you're talking.
Ecco! -
Prada and Gucci. Posh's dark eyes go dreamy for a second, the way they
do when
the words 'Prada' and 'Gucci' come to mind, which they clearly do a hundred
times
a day, and they suddenly focus into shock and she leaps to her feet yelling
'Oww!
Naoww!' like Eliza Doolittle. 'What? What?' I ask, startled, and she howls
aloud:
'Don't put that. Leave it out. Promise me you'll leave that out. Hate-mail.
I'll get such
hate-mail from all those Manchester United fans. Oww!' She really, really
means it.
'I get enough as it is! If they think I'm persuading him to move to Italy.
'I'll get sacks
of hate-mail.'
By this time, I am laughing fit to bust at her consternation, but then
she gives out
another anguished yell as an even more horrible thought strikes. 'Even
Alex
Ferguson'll start sending me hate-mail,' she says, and we both go quiet.
Poor little Posh. She shouldn't have a care in the world. She's young,
rich, successful,
famous and gorgeous. She's beloved by Becks, adored by fans, cover-starred
by
Tatler and clothed from head to toe by Prada and Gucci - and what's her
problem?
She's haunted, like every football manager in Britain, by the terrifying
spectre of
Manchester United's Alex Ferguson.
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