Читать книгу Spice Girls - Sean Smith - Страница 12

Back at the office in Lightwater, Chris started to sift through his notes and scoresheets to decide on the best twelve contenders for a second audition. The idea was to have a closer look at the probables and possibles and, obviously, come up with a final five. He couldn’t help noticing that his secretary, Louise, was still fielding calls from a persistent young woman from Watford. To his surprise, they seemed to be building a nice rapport.

Eventually Chris’s curiosity got the better of him and he told her to put the girl through. He soon discovered for himself that Geri Halliwell was a force of nature. She had seen the original advertisement in the Stage and had kept in touch to let them know how keen she was, but on the day she was nowhere to be seen.

Several possible explanations for her absence were volunteered. One was that she had been on a skiing trip and suffered sunburn. Another was that she had needed to make a flying visit to her grandmother in Spain. Chris was impressed by her audacity in keeping her foot in the door. He could see from the photos she sent in that she was sexy without being Hollywood glamorous.

‘She was very bubbly on the phone and we wanted to see her. It didn’t dawn on me at the time but I think she obviously knew she would have failed in an early-round audition and she wanted to bypass that. I think she’d worked that one out and I think that was her strategy.’

Geri almost admitted as much when she said, ‘I didn’t think I would have got an audition because my vocal technique was not very good then.’ If it was her game plan, it paid off because Chris took a chance and invited her to the call-back at Nomis Studios in West London.

Unlike Melanie Brown and Victoria Adams, Geri hadn’t spent half her time as a youngster attending dancing classes. She didn’t have any trophies and cups on the sideboard or framed photographs of her singing sweetly in a stage musical. But somewhere along the line she had developed an overwhelming desire to be famous. Chris noted, ‘She was incredibly hungry for fame.’

Geraldine Halliwell is one of the few women that Kylie Minogue could look in the eye. She is very petite – not much more than an inch or two over five feet. As a child she showed no inclination to grow. Her Spanish-born mother was so concerned at her small offspring that when Geri was nine she took her to see a specialist doctor to find out if she needed medical help. Her Spanish relatives helpfully nicknamed the little girl La Enana which translates as ‘the Dwarf’. It wasn’t exactly an improvement on her earlier pet name, Cacitas, meaning ‘Little Poos’.

Her mother, Ana Maria Hidalgo, was a stunning girl from a village near the historic city of Huesca in north-eastern Spain. She came to London when she was twenty-one to work as an au-pair and fell for the dubious charms of Laurence Halliwell, whom Geri describes as a ‘total rogue’. He was a ‘car-dealer, entrepreneur, womaniser and chancer’.

He spotted Ana in Oxford Street and decided to chat her up. He was forty-four when they married after just a seven-week courtship. He turned out not to be the successful businessman his new wife thought he was, and throughout Geri’s childhood her mother worked as a cleaner to keep the family above the breadline. Laurence had reached the age of fifty when Geraldine Estelle Halliwell was born in the maternity wing of Watford General Hospital on 6 August 1972. They already had a son, Max, five, and a daughter, Natalie, three. The family home throughout Geri’s childhood was in Jubilee Road, Watford, a ten-minute walk to the shops in St Albans Road.

The three-bedroom semi-detached house was in a sombre street in a poorer area of the town but there’s a world of difference between this part of Watford and the grim and dangerous sink estates of the north of England. Geri was a happy and outgoing child, who, as the youngest, was more than a little spoilt. She was also prone to telling little white lies, something she was still apt to do when drumming up publicity as an ambitious performer. Her one-time claim that her mum had aristocratic ancestry was just one of her good-natured fibs.

She shared a room with her big sister, who, for the most part, acted as a protector, although they were only at junior school together. They weren’t alike – Geri was far more extrovert – but they developed a strong bond that completely survived fame. Geri rather sweetly said that she was Natalie’s ‘little shadow’.

Her mum had been brought up a Catholic but was a Jehovah’s Witness throughout most of her daughter’s early years, which meant that they didn’t celebrate birthdays or Christmas or have Easter eggs. She used to take Geri with her from door to door, much to her daughter’s embarrassment. Geri had to listen to her mother cold-calling in the hope of persuading people, in her broken English, to join the faith or that the end was near. At other times she would sit next to her mum at meetings in the local Kingdom Hall and listen to Bible stories. She was delighted when Ana Maria decided it was no longer the belief for her.

Quite often in the school holidays Geri would have to go with her mum to the places she was cleaning because there was no one else to look after her. Even at a very young age she sensed the hardship her mum faced every day, trying to bring up her children properly. She learnt the value of money early, first by helping her sister with her paper round and then by starting her own when she was seven. She had already decided when she was six years old that fame was the best way to a better life for herself and her family. She described it in her book If Only as a ‘magical key’.

Apparently her inspiration as a little girl was watching Margaret Thatcher at the door of 10 Downing Street on her first day as prime minister. She watched it with her dad, who was a ‘true blue Tory’. She loved him dearly, even though he contributed little to the household. He always encouraged his little girl to give everyone a song when they were at home after Sunday lunch.

Occasionally, he would restore an old car and sell it on but he didn’t do much after a road accident left him with a bad hip when Geri was a child. He loved old movies, which he would watch on the telly, sometimes with his youngest daughter, while his long-suffering wife was at work. Geri grew up better acquainted with beautiful Hollywood greats, like Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth, than with the latest chart acts. These were the stars she would pretend to be in front of the mirror with a hairbrush. Her favourite film was the romantic blockbuster Gone with the Wind starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara. Geri vowed that one day she, too, would own a splendid mansion just like the Tara plantation house.

Laurence was distinctly old-fashioned in his musical tastes, and the house in Jubilee Road was filled with the sounds of Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman. Geri observed, ‘It’s probably something to do with having an older father. I’ve always been different from my age group in liking that kind of music.’ He would often be mistaken for her grandfather when they were out and about.

Although she was devoted to her dad, her mum remained her role model, constantly displaying a determination to get things done. She was quite strict with Geri, which led to some mother-daughter tensions while Geri was growing up. Ana Maria didn’t support her plan to sign with a child agent, for instance, telling her she needed to think more sensibly about her future and plan a solid career.

Her parents eventually split when Geri was nine and she went to stay with her half-sister, Karen, who was Laurence’s grown-up daughter from his first marriage. After everything was sorted, she moved back to Jubilee Road while her dad settled into a grotty flat in a high-rise council block in a rougher area of the town, close to the M1. Once a week, Geri would go round to clean the place and make sure there was some milk in the fridge.

After she and Laurence divorced, Ana Maria found a new long-term boyfriend but she was always there to support Geri, if asked. Over the years she realised that trying to rein in her headstrong daughter was a thankless task. Those who came across her, when Geri had fulfilled her dream of fame, remarked that she had no airs and graces. Her future manager, Jon Fowler, observed, ‘Her mum was absolutely terrific. She was very respectful and modest – and always smiling.’

Not all her contemporaries at the Walter de Merton Junior School in Gammon Lane warmed to Geraldine, as her mother always called her, or Jez, as she liked to call herself for a while. One classmate described her as a ‘show-off with a big mouth’. Another threatened to throw her over the railway line until a teacher intervened. Others, though, found her sociable and fun – a natural leader who would bring out the best in everyone.

One of her close friends at the school, Sarah Gorman, recalled that they would go round to each other’s houses for tea and used to play kiss-chase with the boys in the playground.

Despite her small stature, Geri was a demon on the netball court and used to play centre because she was so nimble and nippy. She retained a strong affection for her junior school and returned there in 2008 to read to pupils from the first of her Ugenia Lavender books for children: ‘I felt more nervous reading than I ever did performing as the Spice Girls.’ She even included one of her favourite teachers, Mrs Flitt, as a character in the book.

Even though Walter de Merton had become Beechfield School, it still retained a strong link with its famous former pupil and one of the houses is called Halliwell House.

Before she left junior school, Geri went to her first concert when she joined Natalie to see Wham! on the Big Tour at the NEC, Birmingham, in December 1984. George Michael was performing the number-one single ‘Freedom’ and when he got to the last line, he pointed at Geri and sang, ‘Girl, all I want right now is you.’ She fell in love and decided on the spot that they were going to get married. Every night she would give a poster of him on her bedroom wall a goodnight kiss before getting into bed. Many of her classmates fancied Andrew Ridgeley and would gather outside his parents’ house a couple of miles away in Bushey but Geri’s heart always belonged to George.

Her devotion to George also coincided with her discovery of Madonna, whose flamboyant image would be a considerable influence on her. Even as a young teenager she could identify with the artist who had become the most famous woman in pop, even though she was by no means the best singer or dancer. Instead she had a fantastic image.

After Walter de Merton, Geri was expected to follow her brother and sister to the nearby Leggatts Way Secondary Modern but she had other ideas. She asked her mum if she could try for a place at Watford Grammar School for Girls and surprised everyone by being accepted. It was an early indication that Geraldine Halliwell was someone who could make things happen.

The one drawback was that she lost touch with most of her primary-school classmates, but Geri’s lack of shyness ensured she made friends easily. The new school also gave her the opportunity to discover drama. Growing up, there had been no money for dance classes or music lessons so the highlight of her performance career to date was pretending to be Sandy from Grease and singing ‘Summer Nights’ in assembly at junior school.

Now, she was being encouraged to appreciate Shakespeare, and a trip to watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park was one of the highlights of her time at Watford Grammar. The school was one of the best in the area: founded in 1704 as a charity school, it had an excellent academic reputation.

Geri passed an impressive eight GCSEs, without particularly applying herself. She had no desire to continue a formal education by going on to study for A-levels, Instead she decided to follow her sister Natalie and go to the local Casio College in Langley Road, Watford, which Andrew Ridgeley had attended a few years before. If she had been a bit older Geri might have seen him and George Michael perform there with their original band, the Executive.

Geri studied a curious mixture of finance, travel and tourism, which didn’t suit her. She decided that she was just wasting precious time, promptly left and started dancing. She had no proper training so would just improvise and hope for the best. She had developed a curvaceous figure and was soon noticed around the London clubs. She was paid £40 for dancing on a Saturday night – and Sunday morning – at the Crazy Club and the house-music extravaganzas held at the Astoria in Charing Cross Road.

Geri moved out of Jubilee Road, staying for a while in a terraced house owned by her half-sister Karen and her husband in the Watford suburb of South Oxhey. She had to leave after she had invited everyone in the Game Bird pub to a party at the house. Word got round: two hundred people turned up and wrecked the place. Shamefaced, Geri moved into a squat on a nearby council estate.

Newly independent, Geri had to buy her own food. This was not necessarily a good thing because she was worrying for the first time about her weight. As a result, she did something she later claimed was ‘the biggest mistake of my life’ – she went on a diet. The trigger had been a throwaway remark by one of her fellow dancers about her being a bit plump. She had been a fussy eater as a child – avoiding vegetables if she could – but at least then her mum, who could be quite strict, could keep an eye on her. Left to her own devices she wasn’t eating properly at all.

At least she was saving money. She much preferred to spend what little she had on going out. These were carefree times in the late eighties and Geri became an enthusiastic embracer of the ‘Second Summer of Love’. This was the acid-house culture that had sprung up during 1988 and ballooned into the giant illegal rave events around the M25. Watford was the perfect starting point for dressing up, piling into cars and vans and heading off to the next party location. The Game Bird in Hartspring Lane was close to the M1 and the best kicking-off point in the area – no wonder Geri’s party was mobbed.

Geri was sixteen when she went to her first rave and at seventeen was an old hand. But her cavalier outlook on life took a temporary knock when she discovered a small lump in her right breast and needed an emergency operation to have it removed. Fortunately, it was benign but Geri always felt she was one of the lucky ones and, in the future, would strongly encourage young women to be mindful of breast cancer and make sure they checked their breasts regularly.

She found out that she could earn more money abroad so decided to try her luck in the fashionable Mediterranean clubs. At nineteen, she was a dancer at the world-famous BCM Planet Dance club in Magaluf. ‘Dancing’ is a loose term because in effect she was writhing around in a cage ten feet or so above the dance floor. To begin with, she was given a week’s trial by the manager but soon proved to be one of the most popular dancers, dressed in a variety of wigs, bra tops and leather shorts. Geri, it seemed, had mastered the art of flirtation. As one of her close friends observed, ‘She was very good at making you feel special.’

Rather like Melanie Brown in Blackpool, Geri seemed to enjoy her freedom away from her home town and, by all accounts, had a wild few months in the Spanish sun. Kelly Smith, another of her friends from those days, recalled, ‘She was a party animal and didn’t mind showing herself off.’

Aside from dancing in a cage, Geri was doing little more than thousands of teenagers enjoying a month or two in the Spanish sun. It was a rite of passage but, despite the fun, she didn’t lose her focus or ambition.

During her time in Mallorca, she shared a flat with another dancer who had some topless pictures taken by a local photographer. Geri decided to do the same. She had visions of becoming a star in the very lucrative world of glamour modelling. Perhaps this would be her passport to the fame she so desperately wanted – she never tired of telling people she was going to achieve it. Kelly remarked, ‘We thought it was funny when she went on and on about becoming a big star.’

On her return to England, she signed up with what she called the ‘dodgiest agency you could imagine’ but secured one or two decent jobs, including a jeans advert. She also did a Page 3 session for the Sun but the shots weren’t used. Geri found the topless work boring. She told the chat show host Michael Parkinson, ‘I found it very dull – standing there with a window open to keep your nipples firm was not good.’ She had to navigate a dodgy world of casting agents who for no good reason would ask her to strip at auditions for non-nude parts. On these occasions she would make a rapid exit.

Another drawback was the constant scrutiny of her shape. Apparently a photographer made a casual remark about her weight and that was all it took for Geri once again to believe she was fat. Her sparky, fearless demeanour masked an all-too-familiar story of vulnerability.

She was already displaying a fearsome energy that never seemed to run out. She had been moved out of the squat by the council and needed to earn to pay the rent on her tiny flat in another unappetising part of town. She taught aerobics, waited tables, washed hair, and found time to do a day course in television presenting run by Reuters.

Her modelling shots led to her next opportunity, providing the glamour on a Turkish game show. It was called Sec Bakalim and was a version of the old US show Let’s Make a Deal. The producer apparently noticed Geri’s photographs and offered her a job that involved flying to Istanbul every weekend. He told her that she would not be wearing a swimsuit – or less – but a tasteful evening gown. She would also have to ‘love that fridge’. Geri, who was struggling to pay the rent, needed the money so she jumped at the chance to earn a couple of hundred pounds a show.

She wasn’t the presenter. She was the attractive young woman in a movie star dress, who smiled in front of the prizes that the contestants were trying to win. An unexpected bonus was that she was asked for her autograph for the very first time. She enjoyed the experience. Spending time in Istanbul was no hardship and she decided she would accept the role again if she was asked back.

She acquired new representation, Talking Heads in Barnes, run by broadcaster and voiceover maestro John Sachs and well-known agent Anthony Blackburn. They readily saw how appealing Geri was. She was still devouring the Stage every week and going to auditions. One was for a small part in a West End comedy. It didn’t go well but, significantly, the director asked her, ‘Geri, what’s the last thing you’ve read? I bet it was Cosmopolitan.’ And it was.

She resolved to catch up on her education and so, at the age of twenty, enrolled for an English-language course at Watford College in Hempstead Road. She had grown up a lot and, for the first time, felt she ‘understood the wealth and power of words’. She studied Hamlet, loved Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, and discovered the genius of Oscar Wilde.

She was in class when she received the message from her brother that their dad had died. She had just got back from a weekend in Istanbul where she was working on her second game-show season. She said, ‘I was distraught. I felt that he had been snatched away from me.’ She has talked openly about her grief and specifically being in denial that he had gone, even though she went to visit his body at the hospital.

Her description of seeing his body is heartbreaking: ‘He was lying there and all his nails were black – everything was black. His features were sunk. He looked like the Penguin in the film Batman II. It is a horrible memory of my father. It was hideous.’

She dragged herself into college and even joined everyone on a class trip to the West End to see Alan Cumming’s outstanding portrayal of Hamlet at the Donmar Warehouse. The actor would go on to become a familiar figure on British television through his starring roles in US series, including The Good Wife and Instinct. His 1993 Hamlet, however, was arguably the highlight of his career. Geri was enthralled and forgot her own tragedy for a precious hour or two.

After her father’s death, she suffered from bouts of both bulimia and anorexia. She was so down. ‘I wanted to kill myself. I could not function. It was awful.’ She started wearing black, not so much as a gesture of mourning but because she hoped it would make her look thinner. An unnamed family member remembered that Geri at this time would refer to herself as ‘Fatso’. She was getting by on cigarettes and black coffee.

Even her agents noticed how thin she was, although both John and Anthony thought it was because she couldn’t afford to eat properly, rather than anything more serious. They would try to encourage her to have a sandwich when she came to the office.

Outwardly, Geri appeared her normal bubbly self. She continued to go for auditions that she thought might suit her. She went to one to appear in a backing video for Pink Floyd. At another, she met one of the wannabes who would become a Spice Girl. She joined Victoria at a movie call for Tank Girl, loosely based on the comic strip. Once again it was an advertisement in the Stage proclaiming that they were looking for ‘the star of this futuristic action feature film’. The role had already been earmarked for the established actress Lori Petty, who had starred with Madonna in A League of Their Own, so this was little more than a crude publicity exercise for the movie.

Needless to say neither Geri nor Victoria was cast, which was a lucky break as the film ‘tanked’, only earning a quarter of its $25 million production costs. For her part Geri decided not to go back for another season to Turkey – and also called time on any future topless modelling. Her Page 3 ambitions were at an end.

The problem she faced moving forward was: what could she actually do? She might not have been drinking in the Last Chance saloon but she was certainly in the bar next door. Perhaps this pop group might be something.