Mel C nearly kicked out the Spice Girls over ‘disgusting’ comment to Victoria Beckham

Mel C was almost kicked out of the Spice Girls over a spat with Victoria Beckham before their career had even started.

Nowadays, the former bandmates can be seen supporting each other through family dramas and big milestones, but things haven’t always been smooth sailing.

While the band may have been preaching that ‘friendship never ends’, Sporty and Posh had a major clash at the Brit Awards in 1996.

On The Louis Theroux Podcast, Mel, 52, shared how they would ‘police’ each other so nobody went ‘off the rails’.

Louis, 56, said: ‘There was a moment where you were policed by the band mates. They felt, and it sounds so trivial, you’d taken your hair out, so you no longer had a ponytail.

‘This was before you even had released any music, but you were at the Brits, so you were under scrutiny, and your fellow bandmates thought, “What are you doing? You’re f*****g with the look of the band. We’ve all got certain hair that we have.” 

‘And they criticised you, and you told one of them to f**k off, and then the next day they all came on very heavy, sort of telling you that you were out of line, your behaviour was disgusting.’

Mel replied that the moment had sent her into ‘terror’ because she thought she was going to ‘lose everything’ after that night.

‘You know, those dreams as a child, which now were a possibility, I might have f*cked it all up,’ she recalled.

‘And I thought it was very trivial as well because, to put some more meat on the bones of that evening, it was the Brit Awards in 1996, which fall around February time. So, we hadn’t released anything. Nobody in the public knew us. 

‘But in the industry, people had started talking, and we were there, signed to Virgin Records, and we were sitting on a table with Lenny Kravitz, obviously, we were these young girls, so this was an amazing night for us. We had a great night.’

However, the group – who were all under 24 at the time – had a ‘few champagnes’.

Mel continued: ‘We were going to find our car and whatever the situation was, I just turned around and said to Victoria, “Oh, f**k off.” 

‘Unbeknownst to me, go home, go to bed, wake up the next morning, and I was in a lot of trouble.’

She was living with Mel B at the time in Watford, with Geri Halliwell living around the corner, so woke up to the pair telling her they were very unimpressed.

‘They were just disgusted with my behaviour,’ she shared. ‘You know when you’ve had a night out, and you wake up in the morning, and you’ve got beer fear, right?. You think, “Oh, f*ck, I know what I did last night.” 

‘I didn’t even have that. I just woke up going, “Oh, last, last night was fun,” where I had completely brushed off that situation. 

‘But obviously, it had really affected people in a way I hadn’t realised.’

Mel was hauled into manager Simon Fuller’s office to have a chat, in which he said ‘in no uncertain terms’ that ‘if anything ever happened like that again, I would be gone.’

She added: ‘So that completely freaked me out, one, because I didn’t realise I’d done anything that terribly bad, and two, because my actions may have led to me losing everything I’d ever wanted, you know?’

Thankfully, the incident blew over and the band released three successful albums before their hiatus in 2000.

Over the years, they’ve reunited in various configurations, but we’re still waiting for a full five-piece gig, potentially as holographic avatars.

Responding to the Abba-inspired rumours, Mel shared: ‘That would be an amazing thing for us to do, for that legacy to be able to live on, but personally, I want to see us on stage together.

‘I think we need to do some more live stuff, while we still can. There’s so many opportunities, we could do Glastonbury, we could to the Sphere [in Las Vegas], there’s lots of things I’d like to do and I’m working on them.’

Mel is embarking on her first world tour in 20 years, following the huge success of solo album Sweat.

She added: ‘I love performing, anyone who knows me [knows that]. It just doesn’t stop and I’m having the time of my life.

‘Once I get up there, honestly, it’s given me so much energy, it reminds me of why you do it. The people who appreciate your music, it’s the best thing.’