Baby Spice dishes the dirt on the Spice Girls’ early years, those Justin Timberlake rumours and Robbie Williams
“Oh my God, sorry,” laughs Emma Bunton. We are in her record label’s London headquarters and she’s just given a two-finger salute, and not in a Baby Spice, Girl Power kind of way. Bunton is here to film idents for streaming services she seems unfamiliar with and is feeling self-conscious about having to continually say the words “swipe up” alongside a corresponding upwards arm motion. Hence the hand gesture towards her manager. “You didn’t get that on camera, did you?” she says sweetly to the cameraman, who lies accordingly. After a solo hiatus of more than 12 years to focus on TV work, radio presenting and continually reuniting the Spice Girls (there are stadium shows this summer), Bunton’s back with a new album, My Happy Place. Made up of eight covers and two 60s-inspired originals, it’s an album that, like Bunton herself, swings constantly between gloriously naff and endearingly sweet.
It’s an odd sensation interviewing Emma Bunton, a legitimate 90s icon whose identity is so ingrained in popular culture. A bit like being in the same room as a cartoon character from your childhood. She is exactly as you’d imagine: all beatific smiles, heightened emotion (especially when talking about her two children and long-term fiance Jade Jones from Damage), and allergic to controversy. For example, when I ask if she was aware of the online chat surrounding last year’s Spice Girls reunion photo in which Twitter speculated about the alleged presence of a line of cocaine resting on an upturned smartphone, she almost keels over. “You’re joking,” she says, in a voice close to angry. “That is untrue. I mean, we had our children there.” She looks at her PR aghast. “We’ve got a younger generation who are part of this social media world and we need to be a bit careful.”
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