THE RESURRECTION OF MEL B

She's a Spice Girl, a talentshow star and asurvivor. Mel Bisa force to be reckoned with, and she’s finding new strength in brutal honesty and vulnerability.

- Alley Pascoe

T here was a moment in 2019 when Melanie Brown – Mel B – felt truly, completely free. It happened in Bristol; she was standing on stage wearing a pair of handmade leopardprint platform boots, in front of a crowd of 34,000 adoring Spice Girls fans, alongside her fellow band members Geri Halliwell, Melanie Chisholm (Mel C) and Emma Bunton. It was raining heavily, and the stage was slippery. Brown saw the opportunity and ran with it, quite literally. She raced across the drenched stage, throwing her hands in the air and splashing through puddles in her handmade boots. “I feel like I’m flying, completely free,” she said, describing the liberating moment.

It had been a long time in the making. For the Spice Girls, their 2019 shows came more than a decade after their last tour in 2008. For Mel B personally, the band reunion came after the end of an abusive marriage, a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) diagnosis and the release of her powerful memoir, Brutally Honest. Her dramatic run across the water-logged stage wasn’t just a moment of spontaneity, it was a message. “I did it. I’m free,” she said.

The moment of triumph would have made for a happy ending, but Brown’s story was far from over. She may have won the battle for her freedom, but the war was still raging. What came next, no-one could have predicted.

In the British autumn of 2023, Brown hit rock bottom. She’d been there before, but this time was different. She was scrunched into a shaking ball in the upstairs room of her Leeds home; crying uncontrollably, desperate and distressed. “Please, Melanie, you have to have proper help,” pleaded her supportive fiancé, Rory McPhee.