I'll never divorce, says Spouse Girl: Former feminist icon reveals she loves her new role - as a wife and mother

‘Bluebell has taught me everything. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without her,' said Geri (pictured with her nine-year-old daughter and one of her two Pomeranian dogs)

‘Bluebell has taught me everything. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without her,' said Geri (pictured with her nine-year-old daughter and one of her two Pomeranian dogs)

As a Spice Girl, she became a feminist icon for a generation of independent young women.

But Geri Halliwell has revealed she is now content to shun the limelight and play the role of devoted wife and mother instead.

The 43-year-old – who married Red Bull Formula 1 team principal Christian Horner in May – says she is happy to have taken his surname and even to cook for him.

In an exclusive interview in Event magazine with today’s MoS, Mrs Horner says: ‘I do cook for him, I do like to see that he’s happy.

‘When I go to the Formula 1 races, I’m not about all the glamour. I’ve been there and done that. I never thought I’d meet the man who I knew I would be with always. I can be myself with him, I can breathe out. I don’t ever want to get divorced.’

Geri – who has a nine-year-old daughter, Bluebell, with former boyfriend, screenwriter Sacha Gervasi – insists she is not betraying her feminist principles.

‘I believe in equality but I’m proud to be a wife and this is me saying I believe in the union of marriage and everything that goes with it,’ she says. ‘I want to share his name. I want me and Christian and Bluebell to have the same name, to be our family.’

And she claims she doesn’t miss life in the public eye, adding, ‘Sometimes the best thing is just hanging out together at home doing absolutely nothing, just eating or watching telly. That’s really nice.’

‘I never thought I’d meet the man who I knew I would be with always': Geri Halliwell on marrying F1 boss Christian Horner and being the perfect housewife

By LOUISE GANNON 

Meet Mrs Horner, the 43-year-old former Spice Girl, who's ditched her name after marrying the motor racing millionaire, but still has her eye on a major pop comeback

‘I believe in equality but I’m also proud to be a wife and this is me saying I believe completely in the union of marriage and everything that goes with it,' said Geri Horner (née Halliwell)

‘I believe in equality but I’m also proud to be a wife and this is me saying I believe completely in the union of marriage and everything that goes with it,' said Geri Horner (née Halliwell)

In the vast sitting room of her rambling north London home, the woman formerly known as Ginger Spice is talking about love: how much she loves her nine-year-old daughter Bluebell, how she loves being a family, and how she adores being married to her handsome new husband, Red Bull F1 chief Christian Horner.

The family house is spacious and beautiful, and endearingly chaotic: her Brit award is on the mantelpiece; the living room is dominated by a grand piano, with family members pictured beaming from impeccably polished silver frames. 

There is a cushion, rather touchingly embroidered with Christian’s name.

The nearby kitchen has room to swing several cats, let alone her two Pomeranian dogs. 

The fridge is decorated with pictures and notes done by Bluebell, who is cooking spaghetti bolognese for dinner. 

At the following day’s shoot, Geri insists on having photos taken of her cooking – complete with fetching Fifties, Doris Day-style apron.

Meet Mrs Horner, as 43-year-old Geri now wants to be known, a picture-perfect model of a not-so-modern housewife, who adopted her husband’s name. 

She says: ‘I don’t ever want to get divorced.’

So whatever happened to Girl Power? What became of the girl who dated Chris Evans, Robbie Williams and socialite heir Henry Beckwith? 

And what happened to Ginger Spice – now, it seems, transformed into the Spouse Girl – who burned herself into the public consciousness, bursting out of her Union Jack mini-dress, red hair blazing, all turbocharged attitude, ambition and sass? Is it not a contradiction of everything she stood for to take her husband’s name?

‘I never thought I would get married because I never thought I’d meet the man who I knew I would be with always. And I am. Most important of all, I can be myself with him (Christian Horner), I can breathe out,' said Geri

‘I never thought I would get married because I never thought I’d meet the man who I knew I would be with always. And I am. Most important of all, I can be myself with him (Christian Horner), I can breathe out,' said Geri

Not at all, says Geri. 

‘I believe in equality but I’m also proud to be a wife and this is me saying I believe completely in the union of marriage and everything that goes with it. 

'I want to share his name. I want me and Christian and my daughter Bluebell to have the same name, to be our family.

‘I do cook for him, I do like to see that he’s happy. When I go to the Formula 1 races, I’m not about all the glamour and that stuff. I’ve been there and done that,’ she says.

‘I never thought I would get married because I never thought I’d meet the man who I knew I would be with always. And I am. 

'Most important of all, I can be myself with him, I can breathe out.’

Geri and Christian were married last May, a little over a year since they first started dating. 

According to reports, her new husband’s parents, Garry and Sara, refused to attend the wedding, apparently angry that their son had left his partner of 14 years, Beverley Allen, just months after she gave birth to their first daughter, Olivia.

When I ask her about the string of romances she is reported to have had in her younger, wilder days, Geri pauses, then roars with laughter. 

‘For the past decade I was painted as this Bridget Jones figure. But half the men I’m supposed to have been out with have been people I may have met once or just been friends with.’

Russell Brand? 

‘Never went out with Russell. He’s very entertaining but he’s never been my boyfriend.’ 

David Walliams. She shakes her head: ‘Love him. But he’s a friend. Never been anything more.’ 

Anyone else? 

‘David Frost’s son [Wilfred]. I met him at a play at the Royal Court. We had our photo taken together and the next thing I know we’re dating. I actually thought it was hilarious.

‘It takes quite a lot for me to actually go out with someone. I’m a girl whose parents divorced. 

'It was me who had the commitment problems because I would always worry about whether it was the right man to be with for ever.

‘That’s why I was so happy when I met Christian. I knew it was right and I want it to be for ever. I don’t want to get a divorce.’

It’s true, she seems more settled these days. And she insists she is at the best period of her life. 

She doesn’t miss the hysteria of fame, the 24/7 work schedule. She has time to spend with Horner, with Bluebell and with her dogs. 

‘Sometimes, the best thing is just hanging out together at home doing absolutely nothing, just eating or watching telly. That’s really nice.’

But who hogs the remote control?

‘We share it.’ 

'I was so happy when I met Christian. I knew it was right and I want it to be for ever. I don’t want to get a divorce,' said Geri (pictured on her wedding day in May)

'I was so happy when I met Christian. I knew it was right and I want it to be for ever. I don’t want to get a divorce,' said Geri (pictured on her wedding day in May)

Here Bluebell chips in: ‘Actually Mummy, no offence but can I make a point? There’s a tiny bit of snatching of the remote if Daddy wants to watch F1 and if you want to watch Modern Family!’ 

Geri laughs to concede the point.

It is now two decades since Geri was the most iconic member of the biggest girl band in pop-music history, whose net worth at the height of their fame in the late Nineties was more than £100 million.

The Spice Girls were always bigger than sales, money and marketing. They were a movement, with a tag line ‘Girl Power’. A line-up of fabulous nobodies determined to become famous somebodies with memorable monickers to ensure they stuck in the mind. 

There was ‘Posh’ Spice (Victoria Adams, now Beckham), ‘Scary’ (Melanie Brown), ‘Sporty’ (Melanie Chisholm), ‘Baby (Emma Bunton) and ‘Ginger’ (Geri).

But it was Ginger who gave the best soundbites (branding Margaret Thatcher as the ‘original Spice Girl’), Ginger who made headlines by pinching Prince Charles’s bum when the band met him at a Prince’s Trust event (the Prince would go on to say meeting the band was the second-greatest moment of his life; Nelson Mandela went one better, stating that meeting his heroines was his finest moment), and Ginger who upended everything when she quit the band to go solo four years into their world domination.

‘I was 100 per cent fearless,’ she says about those days.

‘If we’d listened to other people, things wouldn’t have happened,’ she insists. 

‘I remember standing in a room full of male record executives in 1996 arguing with them about putting out Wannabe as our first single. But it was that song that made us.’

Wannabe hit No 1 in 37 countries and established the group as a global phenomenon. It topped the British charts for seven weeks, the U.S. Billboard charts for four, and paved the way for four working-class girls (and one middle-class lass, Posh) to run riot through a music industry dominated by boy bands and men in suits. 

The girls became the faces of everything from Polaroid to Pepsi and a year later launched themselves into movies with Spice World.

Everything they did – often against advice – went their way. Geri grins as she tells the story behind that Union Jack dress, which became their trademark image and featured on the front page of every newspaper and magazine from Japan to John O’ Groats after she wore it at the Brits in 1997.

‘It was actually a little black Gucci dress I’d been told to wear at the Brits,’ she says. 

‘I took two Union Jack tea towels and sewed them on top. Our stylist wasn’t happy; she said it was a big mistake. But that’s the dress everyone remembers. 

'It’s now hanging in the Hard Rock Cafe in Las Vegas. I don’t hang on to anything,’ she explains. ‘I lived it.’

'When I go to the Formula 1 races, I’m not about all the glamour and that stuff. I’ve been there and done that...  I go to support him (Christian),’ said Geri

'When I go to the Formula 1 races, I’m not about all the glamour and that stuff. I’ve been there and done that... I go to support him (Christian),’ said Geri

Today, Geri is poised to re-enter the music business, with a yet-to-be-named new album nearly finished. Listening to it, it’s clear she has put a lot of time into developing her voice. 

Songs from Love And Light to Sheriff and Phenomenal Women are classic, old-style autobiographical Halliwell, but the voice is different. 

Geri concedes: ‘I’ve done a lot of work on it. I want people to hear that I can actually sing.’ 

You do have to wonder why, after nearly ten years, she can be bothered trying to push her way back into the turmoil of the music industry. 

Over the past decade, she explains, ‘I’ve been growing up’. 

‘I could only do that if I wasn’t under the spotlight. You want to be famous, you want this life and then you get it and it doesn’t necessarily make you happy. 

'You go from “I want to be famous” to “I want to be happy”.

‘I wanted something different. I had a daughter, I wanted to focus on her. I wanted normality in my life. 

'When you become famous, you arrest your own development. I didn’t have a personal life in my 20s. I got asked out by a prince once and I wouldn’t go because I was too busy, too tired [for the record, it was neither Harry nor William].

‘I had major body issues. I had bulimia, because a side-effect of being constantly in the media glare is that everything about you is scrutinised. 

'I yo-yo’d. I wanted to be perfect because that’s what you think you have to be.’

Her weight issues, it seemed, went hand in hand with her solo success. 

Less than a year after leaving the Spice Girls her famous curves disappeared, and pictures emerged of her looking skeletally thin after she dropped from nine stone to seven.

Today, at 43, she says having bulimia is simply ‘part of my history – I don’t shut the door on it’. But nor does she focus on it either.

‘I’m less controlling about the way I look,’ she says. ‘I try and let go of my neuroses. I got to the stage [with bulimia] of thinking enough is enough. I needed time out. 

'I was done explaining myself, done being in that trap of living up to some image which really wasn’t everything I was.’

Inches of newspapers and magazines have been devoted to her Spice Girl feuds and her apparently endless trail of broken relationships since she gave birth to Bluebell, by Emmy award-winning director and screenwriter Sacha Gervasi.

‘I was 100 per cent fearless. If we’d listened to other people, things wouldn’t have happened,’ Geri said of The Spice Girls (pictured: reunited with the band in 2007)

‘I was 100 per cent fearless. If we’d listened to other people, things wouldn’t have happened,’ Geri said of The Spice Girls (pictured: reunited with the band in 2007)

The relationship lasted months and Geri will not be drawn on it. She is fulsome about her pregnancy, however, crediting it for helping her resolve her body issues and re-evaluate her life. 

‘Bluebell has taught me everything,’ she says. ‘I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without her.’

When she quit the Spice Girls, Geri cited one reason as ‘differences between the group’ – leading to speculation of feuds, particularly between her and the fiery Melanie Brown. (Brown, who took years to forgive Geri for quitting the band on her birthday, later admitted: ‘We fought like cats and dogs.’) 

But the pair restored their friendship when the group reunited in 2007, and 17 sell-out shows at London’s O2 netted the band £16.5 million.

Geri shrugs when asked about the rows. 

‘All relationships go through things, but us girls went through this unique experience together. 

'What I remember most about that era was the relationship we had as five women.’

‘The great thing about the reunion was we’d changed, we’d become mothers, but were still those girls who wanted to rule the world – and did. It was the right thing to do for all of us. 

'We love each other and I’m proud of all of them – including myself.’

Geri has recorded a slower, acoustic version of Wannabe, which she plays me on her phone. It’s more than a song for her, she says. It’s a symbol.

‘It’s my favourite of all the songs we did. I still love those lyrics. When you slow it down you can hear them. And they still mean a lot to me now.’

Rumours have been bubbling away about a Spice Girl reunion, sans Posh (to hit the 20th anniversary, next year, of the release of Wannabe). 

Other members have teasingly poured cold water on the notion, with Emma Bunton (aka Baby Spice) tweeting: ‘do I need to put my pigtails in?’ Mel C (Sporty) wondered ‘whether I need to start practising my backflip’.

Geri says, diplomatically: ‘I am always flattered by the support myself and the other Spice Girls receive from the public. 

'We are still as close and constantly chatting on the phone with one another. But nothing is set in stone. 

'There’s always speculation regarding the Spice Girls getting back together. Let’s just see what happens. Life is good and I’m happy.’

Mr Horner clearly makes her happy. She and Bluebell attend Formula 1 races, on one occasion with Victoria and Emma and their children. 

‘It was actually a little black Gucci dress I’d been told to wear at the Brits. I took two Union Jack tea towels and sewed them on top. Our stylist wasn’t happy; she said it was a big mistake,' said Geri (pictured in 1997)

‘It was actually a little black Gucci dress I’d been told to wear at the Brits. I took two Union Jack tea towels and sewed them on top. Our stylist wasn’t happy; she said it was a big mistake,' said Geri (pictured in 1997)

She said: ‘When I go to F1, Christian is working and I go to support him.’

And she says she loves cars. 

‘My dad sold second-hand cars. He used to take me and my sister banger racing. My mum had no idea what that was, so she used to dress us up in our best clothes and we’d come home covered in black exhaust smoke. 

'With the first pay cheque I got from the Spice Girls, I went out and bought a classic MGB Roadster 1965 with silver spoke wheels.

'I watch Top Gear – I’ve even been on it.’ 

Underneath the calmer, happier exterior, there are flashes of the old Ginger Geri. 

She’s worked on her voice, she talks about how much she loves writing songs, she wants you to hear them. She is absolutely certain her new music will strike a chord. 

‘This is for women like me, for my generation,’ she says with total conviction.

It reminds me of the first time I met her back in 1994, when she and the rest of the girls brought their demo CD and sang in front of me, leaping on to the office desks to make sure they got my attention. 

At the time she told me: ‘Whatever anyone thinks, we’re going to be famous.’ She was right.

‘I’m two people in one body,’ she explains. ‘I love exotic holidays but I love to go to Devon for a week and eat fish and chips, like when I was a kid. 

'Bluebell has grown up travelling first class one minute and easyJet the next. That’s me. I swing from one extreme to another.’ 

She says she does worry about spoiling Bluebell and admits that, as a mother, she is more of a communicator than a layer-down of the law. 

‘I never want to push her,’ she says.

Geri knows the Spice Girls are iconic. She is secure of her place in history. But ask if she believes the Spice Girls paved the way for other female artists and she shrugs.

‘If you are talented, you’ll break through. There’s a lot of talented females. I love Emeli Sandé and Adele. The first gig Bluebell wanted to see was Taylor Swift and she was incredible.’

There’s a reason why Geri wants to sing again now, and it’s not unconnected to the success of stars such as Swift, Ellie Goulding, FKA Twigs and Rita Ora. 

At the height of her success as a solo artist, she had four No 1s and three albums that went platinum and gold. She could sit at home, paint her nails and count her millions.

But she says she wants to communicate what she’s learnt about life, and the happier place she finds herself in now. 

‘I’m proud to be older,’ she says. ‘A lot of me being away from all this was just learning to accept who I am with all my imperfections and be happy about it.’

‘I don’t want to be Botoxed and sucked in and pretending to be younger than I am. 

'I’m still vain, I still want to look good but I want to look good naturally. 

'I get so disappointed when you see women who’ve had all this work done and you just think, “Why?”

‘It bothers me that there are all these great female singers out there but there is no one singing for my generation. It’s an implicit ageism. 

'I want to be the voice of my generation and these songs are for women my age who have been through it and who are proud to be who they are. They are songs of optimism and life experience.’

She leans forward conspiratorially.

‘And of course, you know I’ve been told writing songs for my generation absolutely won’t work...’

Prepare for a big hit, Mrs Horner.

Geri Horner is set to release her new album in spring 2016

 

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