Sean Smith - Spice Girls - The Story of the World’s Greatest Girl Band

Another drawback was the constant scrutiny of her shape. Apparently a photographer made a casual remark about her weight and that was all it took for Geri once again to believe she was fat. Her sparky, fearless demeanour masked an all-too-familiar story of vulnerability.

She was already displaying a fearsome energy that never seemed to run out. She had been moved out of the squat by the council and needed to earn to pay the rent on her tiny flat in another unappetising part of town. She taught aerobics, waited tables, washed hair, and found time to do a day course in television presenting run by Reuters.

Her modelling shots led to her next opportunity, providing the glamour on a Turkish game show. It was called Sec Bakalim and was a version of the old US show Let’s Make a Deal . The producer apparently noticed Geri’s photographs and offered her a job that involved flying to Istanbul every weekend. He told her that she would not be wearing a swimsuit – or less – but a tasteful evening gown. She would also have to ‘love that fridge’. Geri, who was struggling to pay the rent, needed the money so she jumped at the chance to earn a couple of hundred pounds a show.

She wasn’t the presenter. She was the attractive young woman in a movie star dress, who smiled in front of the prizes that the contestants were trying to win. An unexpected bonus was that she was asked for her autograph for the very first time. She enjoyed the experience. Spending time in Istanbul was no hardship and she decided she would accept the role again if she was asked back.

She acquired new representation, Talking Heads in Barnes, run by broadcaster and voiceover maestro John Sachs and well-known agent Anthony Blackburn. They readily saw how appealing Geri was. She was still devouring the Stage every week and going to auditions. One was for a small part in a West End comedy. It didn’t go well but, significantly, the director asked her, ‘Geri, what’s the last thing you’ve read? I bet it was Cosmopolitan .’ And it was.

She resolved to catch up on her education and so, at the age of twenty, enrolled for an English-language course at Watford College in Hempstead Road. She had grown up a lot and, for the first time, felt she ‘understood the wealth and power of words’. She studied Hamlet , loved Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, and discovered the genius of Oscar Wilde.

She was in class when she received the message from her brother that their dad had died. She had just got back from a weekend in Istanbul where she was working on her second game-show season. She said, ‘I was distraught. I felt that he had been snatched away from me.’ She has talked openly about her grief and specifically being in denial that he had gone, even though she went to visit his body at the hospital.

Her description of seeing his body is heartbreaking: ‘He was lying there and all his nails were black – everything was black. His features were sunk. He looked like the Penguin in the film Batman II . It is a horrible memory of my father. It was hideous.’

She dragged herself into college and even joined everyone on a class trip to the West End to see Alan Cumming’s outstanding portrayal of Hamlet at the Donmar Warehouse. The actor would go on to become a familiar figure on British television through his starring roles in US series, including The Good Wife and Instinct . His 1993 Hamlet, however, was arguably the highlight of his career. Geri was enthralled and forgot her own tragedy for a precious hour or two.

After her father’s death, she suffered from bouts of both bulimia and anorexia. She was so down. ‘I wanted to kill myself. I could not function. It was awful.’ She started wearing black, not so much as a gesture of mourning but because she hoped it would make her look thinner. An unnamed family member remembered that Geri at this time would refer to herself as ‘Fatso’. She was getting by on cigarettes and black coffee.

Even her agents noticed how thin she was, although both John and Anthony thought it was because she couldn’t afford to eat properly, rather than anything more serious. They would try to encourage her to have a sandwich when she came to the office.

Outwardly, Geri appeared her normal bubbly self. She continued to go for auditions that she thought might suit her. She went to one to appear in a backing video for Pink Floyd. At another, she met one of the wannabes who would become a Spice Girl. She joined Victoria at a movie call for Tank Girl , loosely based on the comic strip. Once again it was an advertisement in the Stage proclaiming that they were looking for ‘the star of this futuristic action feature film’. The role had already been earmarked for the established actress Lori Petty, who had starred with Madonna in A League of Their Own , so this was little more than a crude publicity exercise for the movie.

Needless to say neither Geri nor Victoria was cast, which was a lucky break as the film ‘tanked’, only earning a quarter of its $25 million production costs. For her part Geri decided not to go back for another season to Turkey – and also called time on any future topless modelling. Her Page 3 ambitions were at an end.

The problem she faced moving forward was: what could she actually do? She might not have been drinking in the Last Chance saloon but she was certainly in the bar next door. Perhaps this pop group might be something.

The best-laid plans for the call-back were slightly disrupted when Chris was told one of the shortlist couldn’t make it. Joan O’Neill had rung from her Merseyside home to tell him that her daughter Melanie Chisholm had tonsillitis. Melanie obviously couldn’t speak to him herself because she was under strict orders to rest her voice. Chris had been impressed by her vitality at the first audition and was able to reassure Joan that her daughter was not going to lose this opportunity.

Melanie Chisholm lived and breathed dancing. Growing up, it was her pastime and her passion and she was brilliant at it. But, secretly, she wanted to be a singer like her mum.

Joan was already making a name for herself around the pubs and working men’s clubs of Merseyside before her eldest daughter was born. At the end of the sixties, she had joined a band called Petticoat and Vine, which is best described as a folk-rock group in the tradition of the Mamas and the Papas. She was then going by her maiden name of Joan Tuffley – although in those days she was billed professionally as Kathy Ford.

Norman Smeddles, the guitarist and leader of the group, decided they should have two female lead singers. His girlfriend and future wife, Val, was one and Joan became the other. They were blonde, pretty, and excellent singers. Norman recalled, ‘Joan was a typical Scouser with a quick wit and was not slow to speak her mind.’

Joan’s voice had a touch of Roberta Flack about it, and she adored Motown artists, particularly the cool and melodious Smokey Robinson, whom she called ‘Smokey Robbo’, much to everyone’s amusement. She was so skinny that her friends used to refer to her as Joan the Bone.

They secured a record deal with the Philips label in 1970 and released a début single called ‘Riding a Carousel’, a pleasant enough song. It led to their TV début in October that year on The Harry Secombe Show , alongside other guests Jimmy Tarbuck and the popular Irish singer Clodagh Rogers.

Joan cheekily managed to buttonhole Jimmy and secure an invitation for the group to appear on his own show. All was going well and national stardom beckoned. The one potential difficulty was that Joan had fallen in love with Alan Chisholm, whom she had met one evening at the Cavern Club, arguably the most famous music venue in the country, thanks to the Beatles’ performances there.