It's All A Bit Of A Blur Really

Will they or won't they? I wonder if anyone really cares whether the Spice Girls reform and play at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, their music and act was pretty much a style over substance affair anyway - and most serious critics deemed that not one of them possessed any real musical talent. Not even the ugly one - Mel C - who was nearly, though never quite nick-named Ugly Spice due to her plainness. Even she was not obviously blessed with talent, though it was fashionable for some to to say otherwise. It became a profound thing to say in favour of the plain one. Yeah, but she can sing. At least she can sing. She might be a tree-pig but she's the only one with talent. The one who isn't talent, has talent.

This was unfair. They all had provocative performance talent. And had any of the other Spices been de-sexualised as part of Simon Fuller's grand project to manufacture a band of five very different feminine creations to represent a nineties phenomenon called 'Girl Power' a term probably unconsciously lifted from Malcolm 'Under the Volcano' Lowry from where he described in a letter how he noticed a Roman Catholic church with a notice saying: "We want girl power for our convent," they too would've struggled in the allure stakes. None of the others would have looked all that good if they too had been made to wear trackies and trainers while the rest were encouraged to resemble a 1970s Eurovision sex and cheese-fest: all sparkly micro-minis, re-vamped hotpants, seductive glossy chiffon wraps, comic shoes, slut hair-dos and teasingly-pleasingly exposed flesh.Instead four out of the five were scripted to flaunt and taunt with their flat voices and bounteous chests. Display their youthful sparky glee, squeezed cleavages and choreographed knicker shots. While the gym section, poor Sporty, The Sporty One, did press-ups and cartwheels in a blur of addidas piping, sexless leggings and tied up hair.

Every male had his favourite. Mostly you were either in Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice) or Victoria Adams (Posh Spice) camps. The others: Baby and Scary taking the minor places. No-one chose Sporty as their virtual dream date. Then again, no-one could have known that Mel C would one day emerge swan-like into a bit of a beauty with an unexpectedly revealed elegance, deep liquid eyes and cheeky smile. At the time of the SG's zenith though, Sporty definitely did the Ringo thing when choices were made. In fact popular opinion considered her as much Dingo as Ringo.

Actually, had we looked closer at each of the Spices they could all have had crueler, less flattering nick-names - Mel B (Scary Spice) was irredeemably gobby, another, Emma B (Baby Spice) was quite a shapeless lard-tub. And with Geri (Ginger Spice) being a bit all nose and the height of a pixy, and Victoria, showing the world a street urchin's face and soon to make a mockery of the Posh title by sounding like the wayward daughter of a costermonger, perhaps a more biting: Gobby, Lardy, Dwarfy, Scally Spice could have been the alternative familiar roster, with Sporty making up the quintet. Might have been fairer. Fairer for Sporty anyway.

But I digress. As only Blog writing allows. I would like to see them perform again. In all their glorious crapness. And let's watch Sporty out shine them all.