STRONGER AND WISER AS SHE EMBRACES A NEW CHAPTER MELANIE BROWN ON RAISING CONFIDENT WOMEN, FINDING NEW LOVE AND RETURNING TO HER 'HAPPY PLACE' ON STAGE

If anyone knows how to start over, it’s Melanie Brown. Having risen from the ashes of a toxic ten-year relationship, the feisty Spice Girl has rebuilt her life with the same zeal that won her a place in one the most successful girl bands in history.

She’s also written a best-selling book and become a campaigner against domestic violence while successfully raising three children – Phoenix, now 25, Angel, 16, and 12-year-old Madison.

In her 20s, as Scary Spice, Melanie was responsible for inspiring a generation with girl power. Now 48, could she do the same for midlife women also in their second act?

“You are as old as you feel,” she says firmly during our exclusive in ter view. “Numbers aren’t relevant. You can have a bit of a panic when you come into your 40s, because you haven’t got things quite as you thought they were going to be. You have some of your hardest challenges. But there’s also something really freeing about it.

“I don’t know if it’s because you’re putting yourself out there, or just ready for it in life. But there’s a lot to be said about women in their 40s because they’re more aware and self assured. It’s an age not to mess with.”

It has taken her several years, however, to reach this point in her own life. In 2018, Melanie wrote her memoir Brutally Honest, a detailed account of her marriage to the film producer Stephen Belafonte, which she says was emotionally, physically and financially abusive. He has always denied the claims.

This week, the book is republished with three new chapters, describing how she started again "from ground zero".

After leaving her then husband in 2017, she returned to the UK from Los Angeles in 2019 for the Spice Girls' reunion tour, lived for a while at her mum's house in Leeds and slowly, painfully, began to piece herself back together.

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