Prince William tells Mel B he wants the Spice Girls to get back together while receiving her MBE

Virgin Radio

5 May 2022, 15:58

Mel B might have been proudly accepting her MBE for work supporting domestic violence charity Women's Aid, but Prince William was also keen on cementing a Spice Girls reunion.

After being presented her MBE yesterday, Scary Spice - who was wearing a Victoria Beckham dress - told The Sun: “William told me, ‘I’m so delighted that it’s me giving you this’.

"And he asked, ‘Will you get the Spice Girls back together?’ I told him I was having dinner with Victoria that evening and he said, ‘Oh good, I’ll work on David then’.

“When it came to the part where Prince William had to pin the MBE on, he asked for a female official to do it. I didn’t think I had that much cleavage on show!”

Melanie said of her Spice Girl days and hanging out with the young Princes: “I remember once around the time the Spice World movie came out we were helicoptered into Highgrove and we hung out with them, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

“I think William thought I was receiving the MBE for being a Spice Girl, but I told him that it was for my work on domestic violence. He wanted to hear all about it.

“In fact, I felt guilty holding up the queue because we spent so long talking. I told him I had been in an abusive marriage for ten years, which I finally got out of by the skin of my teeth.

“And then I wrote a book all about it and became a patron for Women’s Aid. I told him that when I wrote my autobiography, people were not really talking about things like coercive control, that it was a dark, taboo topic. I explained that I often visit a women’s refuge in Leeds near where I live.

“He said, ‘That must be really fulfilling for you to talk about it and help women’. I said that my story is exactly like so many of the women’s I meet and that I managed to get out and survive.

“It was a really good conversation and a very special moment for me."

She continued: “I have felt really calm and peaceful today, but really it is surreal. I was a Spice Girl, I stood for Girl Power. But then I met a man who swept me off my feet, who I thought was Prince Charming, but I became Girl Powerless.

“He destroyed my confidence, isolated me from my friends and family and made me feel useless and ugly, like I was better off dead.

“But I have had to work on myself and face up to what happened. It is tempting to block it out, but that does no good. I spoke up and got out of my horrendous marriage and have tried to help other women, and men, who are going through abuse.”

As patron of the charity, Mel said: “An army of women stand behind me today. I accepted the MBE on behalf of them.

“This MBE is not for me, Mel B the Spice Girl, it’s for me, Melanie Brown, the mixed-race, working-class girl from Leeds who went through an abusive marriage then spoke about the very worst thing that happened in her life.”

And that's Woman Power.

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