Sinead: Really interesting quote from Victoria who said “Simon Fuller had always said a man will ruin this group, meaning one of our boyfriends from the outside. But the man who started to tear the Spice Girls away from each other was him.”
Elyse: How ironic.
Spice Invaders Theme Song: [over trumpet music] It’s got theme song vibes. Like danceable, funky. [Laughter]. So 90s. Girl power. Spice Invaders.
Ashley: After Spice World, what happened next?
Sinead: Are we ready?
Ashley: Yeah. What are you going to talk about today?
Sinead: Well, last week we teased about Simon Fuller getting fired. So first we're going to talk about the men behind the scenes of the Spice machine, and the publicity stuff that the girls had in South Africa before they fired Fuller.
Cheryl: One of the dirty secrets of girl power is actually that many of the top rules are held by men. Jumping back in time briefly, The Dublin Evening Herald ran a piece in June 1997 with the headline “Manpower Made The Spice Girls.” The article rehashes Chris Herbert’s role in the group’s origins, uncovers that even less powerful roles like “personal lawyer,” “Accountant” and “official photographer” are filled by men.
It exemplifies something that a lot of news outlets are sort of hinting and sniffing around at the time, is that there's a heck of a lot of men behind the scenes of the Spice machine, and some of them are responsible for the level of fame the band was enjoying. And no one is quite representative of this tension, like, as much as Simon Fuller who, as we know, is their manager.
There's a quick jump into what a manager actually does. They are really key players in a musician's career, they ensure music ends up in the right hands and negotiate contracts, they help set up gigs. They oversee the day to day business affairs of an act. And they work in the best interest of the act on larger projects and other professional matters. And they act as an advisor when it comes to long term plans.
Knowing all that, we also know that the band schedule and the demands on them are insane. At this time, there's naturally some conflicts that are going to happen between the girls themselves and their management. But Geri and Mel B, whose relationship has been characterized as intense, both by them and everyone around them, when they were getting along the relationship was fantastic. But when they weren't, it could get ugly, which of course, when everyone involved working over 100 hours a week, conflict is kind of inevitable.
And with this happening, Fuller is an unusually involved manager, he admits later to David Sinclair in the girls biography, “I got involved in everything. There wasn’t a single row I wasn’t in the centre of, basically pulling them off each other or else siding with the one that was about to get pummelled to death or kicked out of the group. It’s one thing to be a manager who chooses the songs, guides the image and all the other things. But it’s quite another when you’re actually brokering the peace on a daily basis. That’s kind of full on.”
So Victoria remembers the hands-on management style quite differently. She refers to the Fuller strategy as divide-and-rule to keep the girls separate and happy. She says “It was very rare that we were all five together without our hands-on manager busying around. No wonder we didn’t talk.”
Sinead: Another key player in the Spice machine, Gerard Tyrrell, their media lawyer, arranged one of the biggest publicity moments in the girls' careers. And this was going to be on the exact same day that “Spice World” was going to be released.
Sinead: Do we want to talk about how men were like behind the Spice Girls? Their whole team, like all the power players behind them, are basically all men. And they got a lot of criticism for that in the press.
Steph: Like, I know they did choose Fuller to be their manager, but like how many? Like what are the players in the music industry at this point? Did they even have much choice over men like I get but they're probably gonna they got chastised over everything in the media, but like they couldn't have done anything, right. Even if they maybe did it right. They would have still gotten criticized for it. But did they even have a choice to have many women supporting them other than presumably, like a secretary or two?
Sinead: There were definitely female managers by this point in time. I think it's actually Victoria who said that they chose to go with a man. No, it might have been Geri that I'm thinking of, who chose to go with a male manager because they felt they were already kind of a liability being the five of them as girls and like the model being unproven. There are other women for sure who were managing and in like sort of executive type roles, certainly way more men but there were not it wasn't like there were no women.
Megan: Thinking back about like all the history you guys have taken us through and what I read like when they were doing their crazy running around to this producer, to that producer, showing off trying to take meetings like, you know, doing their work to make it, not a lot of women they were going to see or collaborating with, maybe there weren't a lot available, but I find it hard to believe it in the 90s there were no women in music. So I do wonder, was it just because the men were more successful and that’s who they were targeting?
Or those are the ones they had successful collaborations with? So it just makes me wonder, I don't know.
Steph: I mean, building off of what you just said, Sinead, if the girls were afraid, being like a first real girl group, and then not wanting to risk on top of that being with female management, female managers might have been doing this like the same thinking like, we can't ruin our career. If we're just kind of actually finally getting a foothold in the door, Why would I ruin my career with something that's not going to be a sure thing? I'm going to try and go, I'm going to keep going, building with a sure thing. And then when I'm, like, more established, I risk, they would have essentially been working against each other, even though they were going to try and accomplish the same thing. Oh, the world.
Ashley: It’s a fair point.
Sinead: Yeah, no, it definitely is.
Elyse: I think there's also like, the reverse way of looking at it, which obviously isn't how the press would look at it. But I think you could just as easily say, like, look at how many people these women are employing and like they’re men, but they're kind of their boss, which I don't know, maybe that's kind of a cool reverse.
Sinead: So, speaking of some of those men, on November 1 1997, the band headed to Johannesburg to perform at the two nations concert, which is a concert presented by the nation's trusted charities supported by Nelson Mandela in post-apartheid South Africa. There were 28,000 tickets sold. Some of them were given away actually in some of the poorer townships around Johannesburg, to celebrate the musical and cultural ties between Britain and South Africa.
The real story of course, obviously was behind the scenes, the band would perform three tracks for free and in exchange the Spice Girls would get to meet Nelson Mandela in front of the press. So basically, they brokered a promotional stop that would become international news. According to Mandela's reps they were dissatisfied with the idea but they eventually agreed because of the star power of the Spice Girls for the charity concert, they thought it was worth it. And Mandela reportedly said to Gerard Tyrrel “don't worry, I'm used to being used” with a smile.
Elyse: Oh, no.
Cheryl: So due to all these machinations the girls have ended up in front of the world’s cameras standing wedged between Nelson Mandela and Prince Charles, cameras flashing in their faces.
Steph: Oh, another Prince Charles moment. They love him so much.
Sinead: That motherfucker’s back.
[laughter]
Cheryl: And he says more stupid stuff. When Mandela was asked by journalists how he felt about the girls, he first claimed to be too old for them, to which Geri responded “You’re as young as the girl you feel, and I am 25”.
Which I think we should just do a sidebar is a vast improvement over her saying she's 16.
Ashley: I also just think it's weird that she says the girl you feel, it just sounds so intimate. It's like, you could say the girl you see, she could just say me. The girl you feel..like [laughter]
Sinead: But Ashley, you have to understand Prince Charles is there. It's an opportunity for Geri to be sexy near him.
Ashley: I guess…
Steph: I was going to say, Geri truly wants to fuck the patriarchy.
[laughter]
Elyse: I think I interpreted that completely differently because it's in her book too. But it's you’re as old as the girl you feel. It's like you feel inside.
Ashley: But then she said and I'm 25, right?
Elyse: Oh my god. Yes. But I think I thought of it as like, a cute quaint, like, I feel I'm 25 and I feel 25. Oh, that's so much grosser.
Sinead: Mandela went on to claim that these are my heroes, and that this is one of the greatest moments of my life.
Steph: I never thought I could relate to Nelson Mandela. But there it is.
[laughter]
Elyse: Geri and Mel B also stole his toilet paper because they thought it would be fun to keep some of his toilet paper, to have Nelson Mandela's toilet paper. They took a few squares of loo roll.
Sinead: I actually have a quote of Mel B talking about that during the press conference after where the press asked them like what did you do at Mandela's house because they were there for like a private event. And then they talked to the press. Mel B said quote “I said to him, I've just pinched some bog roll from your toilet and he just looked at me”
Megan: Did he even know what that meant? Pinched bog roll?
Sinead: Maybe, maybe not.
Steph: Maybe he put it together like they stole toilet paper. I don't know.
[laughter]
Sinead: I don't think that that man knew how much toilet paper was in his house. So it was just like a weird thing. Like I wonder where his toilet roll is now? Does Mel have it at her house?
Elyse: They must’ve kept it. One of them must?
Sinead: Or it got accidentally used because how would you know?
Steph: Well, did they take a whole roll or did they take just some squares?
Sinead: Oh, they took a whole roll.
Elyse: Oh, well, we have another we need to have a segment where Geri and Mel B's recollections don't align because I think Geri just said she took a few squares,
Cheryl: Victoria claims they took five pieces and some pebbles from a plant so that everyone would have a piece.
Ashley: I love how they all conspired to steal.
Sinead: They each took a square of toilet paper and a rock.
Cheryl: Yeah.
Megan: Well, we've seen their outfits where would they hide an entire roll?
Elyse: True. You could fit a few in the NASA suit.
Megan: I only saw sort of positive press about this meeting like both sides seem to enjoy it. Did anyone read anything otherwise?
Sinead: There was cultural criticism at the time and there has been since so David Sinclair, who wrote the biography of Spice Girls said, “Here was the ultimate symbol of a pop world that had been turned on its head; a world in which the earnest politics of 80’s protest had been replaced by the frivolous show business gesture of the 90s. For many observers the very idea of a man of Mandela’s gravitas being maneuvered into meeting with the Spice Girls was a trivialisation of everything for which he stood”.
Ashley: Yet he said it was one of the greatest moments, like, what?
Sinead: I mean, I feel like he was being sarcastic.
Elyse: Really?
Ashley: Have you heard a clip?
Sinead: Yeah there’s video of it.
Ashley: And he sounds sarcastic?
Sinead: No, I mean, he's just being polite. I think he was grateful because they had the star power for his charity, like it was very much a quid pro quo of the entertainment industry. And it's not like that's unusual. He needed more star power, because he was raising money for post apartheid South Africa, like this charity, and like building connections and stuff, and the their team behind them are just masterful at taking a moment and making it into a huge amount of press for themselves.
Cheryl: So yeah, the concert itself is positioned as like, the concert is about the cultural partnership between the two nations. So Britain and South Africa. But beyond Mel C’s remark that This couldn't have happened 10 years ago, because of apartheid. The girls really don't acknowledge the backdrop of this moment that this takes place on.
Sinead: And like they and their team were principally concerned about their image, not a lot more.
Megan: They've been in political trouble before. Maybe they were kind of told, like, just don't get talking about it, so no one will ask for your opinion.
Sinead: It's definitely possible. I mean, I definitely think part of their media training was not to say controversial things if they could, or if they were going to, it was like fun, controversial things, not like life or death, controversial things, because that quote that I told you guys from David Sinclair about the 80s protest, he's referring to the fact that in the 80s, like, there were super groups featuring Bono and Bruce Springsteen making songs, protesting apartheid and wanting that system to fall and there was a huge cultural and economic boycott of South Africa. Artists refused to perform there because of apartheid. So like, there was such a significant history and the criticism is that they say stuff like, oh, we stole some toilet paper from his house, or like Emma also said, “It felt a bit like we were his children cuddling up, he was very warm like a father”. Like it's just kind of shallow and vapid like, but also they're just doing their job, and they were put there by someone else, too.
[Chimes]
Sinead: After they met Mandela, the group was finally given a couple of days off at the Sun City resort outside of Johannesburg. This was the first time they'd had time off since before they simultaneously shot Spice World and recorded the album and they were not in great spirits at the resort.
Mel B actually wrote in her journal, “I feel like a headless chicken. I am physically drained. I can’t stand it any more. And no one gives a shit. No one.”
As we’ve discussed before with Elyse, Geri similarly had been struggling in a major way. She had been asking Simon for a week off for a while, seeking treatment for what she would later divulge was an eating disorder, which he would not allow, telling her “There are two reasons Geri. [why she couldn’t have the time off] One, it sets a bad precedent amongst the girls. If you take a week off then everybody will be asking for one. And two, we sold 18 million copies of the first album. That set the benchmark. We want to sell 19 million copies this time.”
Megan: But it's just like, they all might want a week off? As if like, they don't deserve a week off. Like, I don't know, that's horrible.
Cheryl: Yeah. So while the girls have sometimes decompress, Simon Fuller isn't present for this trip, he's recovering from back surgery and so for the first time in a long time, the girls actually get a chance to talk to each other about the experiences and pressure they're all feeling and as well as their growing resentment of Simon’s interference. Robert Sandal at Virgin later says,“I think what happened in South Africa, when he wasn’t there, was that they started to compare notes and started to catch him out. Because he’s a very feline and rather creepy character like that. They realised how he’d been trying to keep them slightly at arm’s length from one another”
And so with this time, and with Geri and Mel B at the helm, the group decided they were going to sack him.
Sinead: Do any of you want to add anything about negative feelings that your Spice Girl had towards Simon Fuller prior to him being fired, Elyse I figured you might have some?
Elyse: Yeah, I mean, it was obvious she was not happy with him. She being Geri, sorry. But it wasn't just her, like from her bio it sounds like the entire group was really, really tired of him and dealing with him and the restrictions.
And I was actually just looking at a quote from Geri's book where she says “a list of why we should sack Simon put spirit back into the group, proves to the world we are not a manufactured band, we have nothing to lose, just hire someone to finish September” and then that evening, they all immediately got on the phone with their lawyers and started hashing out a plan.
So I think it was kind of you know, simmering beneath the surface for everyone. And Geri included, particularly after he wouldn't give her the time off.
Sinead: Yeah, so as soon as the band returned to London from their Sun City trip, Mel B and Geri contacted their lawyers to set up meetings. They wanted to drop the paperwork to be ready as quickly as possible so that they could just fire him and move on.
Cheryl: So Victoria reflecting back on this moment notes “It probably sounds really calculating that we got rid of Simon Fuller when he was in New York, totally bedridden, unable to move with back trouble, but one thing I learned from the game warden in South Africa was that to survive you have to be ruthless. There’s no room for sentimentality in the wilds of Africa or the music business. It’s kill or be killed.”
Sinead: I'm cringing at multiple layers of that
Elyse: Yeah, big time….
[laughter]
Cheryl: It's funny actually reading Victoria's book that she keeps trying to put herself in the driver's seat behind this decision. But she's also one of the biggest brands that's gone back to work with Simon after.
[Chimes]
Cheryl: As the next step in our story, the girls fly to Rotterdam for the MTV Europe awards but that morning 19 Management and Simon Fuller were notified that they were being fired.
Steph: I don't know I like how exactly, I'm pretty sure that this is true because Mel C said in a podcast, Alan Cummings podcast, that Geri stole a PA’s filofax like just like Rolodex of numbers because they didn't have anyone's contacts and then put it in like a big tote bag and they were rehearsing for the show. And she just kept the tote bag with her the entire time while they were rehearsing because they didn't want to lose it or have it be noticed like it was stolen.
Sinead: To add to your story stuff because 19 Management had been so involved in the girls daily affairs, the only mobiles they had were 19 Management property and they like could be cut off at any time. So after 19 was notified, the girls had to head into dress rehearsals, which is where that filofax got stolen, but they actually also stole their choreographer, Camilla Bates's mobile phone, because Geri needed to make sure that she had one. So she took it from the choreographer to the point that she was secretly holding it on stage during the rehearsals. Camilla kept looking for it and calling it and it would start ringing on the stage. And the girls pretended it was one of their own phones ringing and they basically just ignored her.
Elyse: Oh my god!
Sinead: I know and when they finished, they went back into the dressing room, and they were met with their PA’s who were all in tears, because they'd been notified by 19 Management that they had to leave and they weren't working for the band anymore.
And also, according to Nikki Chapman, Geri had also been controlling the girl's personal mobile phones. She wanted to make sure that Simon didn't contact them individually. So Geri was literally taking all their phones and answering calls for them because she was trying to make sure that they had a very united message.
Chapman personally said that she felt like Mel C, Victoria and Emma weren't as keen on firing Fuller and that it was more Geri and Mel B. But I mean, that's just her personal opinion. Nikki Chapman had been an intermediary who was helping the girls with administrative and management stuff. And she also left that day. She didn't technically work for 19 Management at the time, but she had decided it was in her best interest to leave and maintain ties with Simon Fuller because basically this was becoming like a war and you were picking a side and if you weren't picking Simon’s side, you didn't have a job at this very powerful management company.
And people were pretty hesitant to piss him off. Even members of the girls security team left them, not everyone but like there were very few people to help them compared to the size of staff that they were used to being with all the time.
Steph: Well, drama, drama, drama.
Sinead: I do think that the media, like usual, was taking the easy way out, which was to particularly blame Geri but Mel B as well, those were the two names that were thrown around a lot. I don't think it's a coincidence that they're the most outspoken and opinionated spice girls who are willing to speak publicly about things in a direct way. That's not a coincidence at all.
[Chimes]
Cheryl: At the MTV Europe awards, they actually win best group, they have a little moment on stage. They put their arms all around each other and they think, yeah, you know, we can do it. A quick quote from Victoria during this time, she said, “Remember, remember the 5th of November. The 5th of November 1997 was the day I got my friends back. We were in Rotterdam for the MTV awards on the 6th. The night before we all sat in one room, just like the old days. First, we talked everything over. It wasn’t going to be easy, we knew that. But however difficult it was, we would be our own boss. We agreed to go ahead.”
Elyse: Good for them. That's such a brave choice. I mean, we know it didn't end awesome, but good for them in, this moment.
[laughter]
Sinead: Yeah, so following the split, everyone was pretty closed mouthed on what the last straw was. Everyone on every side cites legal reasons for why they can't talk about it because there obviously was a settlement between the Spice Girls and Simon Fuller. There are two major rumored reasons: number one was that the Spice Girls didn't have equal pay. As manager Fuller was receiving 20% of the Spice Girls earnings, while the other 80% was divided by five so only 16% each. Making more than your talent is generally considered a no-no in the industry, and considering how hard they had been working particularly for that year before, it's not unreasonable to speculate that they may have been resentful of the financial arrangement.
Cheryl: I also think that resentment coupled with the idea that news articles keep trying to credit Fuller with more than the girls is definitely a recipe for just wanting to split away from that.
Rumored reason two which is extremely gross, but extremely believable and extremely denied, was that Fuller and Emma Bunton were rumored to be romantically involved and the rest of the group told Emma it was him or the group.
Elyse: Oh, how old, what year were we in? and how old would Emma have been?
Steph: It was in 1997. She would have been like 21?
Elyse: Okay, all right.
Steph: If my math is right.
Elyse: But okay, so definitely not illegal, but icky.
Steph: Icky.
Sinead: Simon Fuller is 16 years older than Emma.
Elyse: Oh, that’s not as bad as I was picturing.
Sinead: So there were a lot of headlines about this, if you guys want to open up your Spice chat. Um, I've sent one of them like a copy of one of the newspaper headlines. This was a very popular story, although it doesn't seem like there was really much behind it other than pictures of Emma looking cuddly with him, which is just how Emma was with everyone. So like you could get a picture like that of her with so many different men and women, like that is just Emma's personality.
Steph: Yeah
Sinead: I do think there's a little bit of wishful thinking slash like wish fulfillment on the part of all of these men running this story about a young girl with an older successful businessman. Like I think that's catnip for a certain type of reader who wants to read it. It's gross, but true.
Cheryl: It's a rumor because it's so believable. Like, you know, if it wasn't this case, there were girls who were being taken advantage of by their managers in this way. It gets a lot of track. You know, this young naive starlet with a successful businessman.
Steph: Celine Dion married her manager, so yeah.
Sinead: Yeah, exactly and it's fucking gross. We’d need another podcast to talk about that.
[laughter]
Ashley: Yeah, I was gonna say that one is a little different because they met when she was like 13 or 12.
Cheryl: It just feels like a way to wash your hands of some very gross behavior by like, creating a rumor that we can totally believe.
Sinead: Simon Fuller was rumored to receive a 10 million pound payout for ending his management of the group. He cites the Spice Girls as an unfinished smudge on his resume.
Elyse: Ouch.
Sinead: Really interesting quote from Victoria, who said, “Simon Fuller had always said a man will ruin this group, meaning one of our boyfriends from the outside. But the man who started to tear the Spice Girls away from each other was him”.
Elyse: How ironic.
[Chimes]
Cheryl: The Spice machine was an intricate network of service providers for the girls. Fuller and his team made sure that they had someone for everything: legal, press management, logistics, like transportation, hotel, Fuller set everyone up and made it really easy for the band to meet the demands of their schedule. When they fired him the floor really did come out from beneath them. Suddenly the five girls had to arrange everything from travel, stylists, hotels again, on their own. Geri would spend hours on the phone booking cars for going to events and travel. They had no security, there was no press management. You know, as we talked about, like Gerard Tyrell was deeply connected to Simon Fuller.
Steph: Sounds like they could have used a Spice Bus.
[laughter]
Ashley: They need Meat Loaf! He would do anything for them. He’d do it all.
Sinead: He might not do that.
Megan: All they need is Meat Loaf and a plumber. Yeah,
Ashley: Exactly.
Steph: And they’re set.
Sinead: That, but no, I mean, this is kind of sad like Geri and Mel B especially thought that firing Simon meant they'd have more time for themselves and to set their own course with a kinder schedule. But the reality of suddenly being teamless when the team and the machine is what made them famous, had a hugely negative impact.
They went from spending all their time running between Simon scheduled gigs to arranging basic logistics so they could meet their schedule at all. And the schedule had been pre-planned by Fuller's team for a year out so suddenly, all of this was on Geri and Mel B to a lesser extent, but Geri was definitely the person who did the most and there basically was a problem right away in.
In mid November 1997 about a week after the Fuller firing took place, the girls were slated to appear at the Premios Amigo Music Awards in Barcelona, where they were going to receive an award for their, quote, contribution to music. It's important to note this event wasn't for music fans, this was for industry insiders and media people. So at the end of the night, it was announced that the Spice Girls would come on stage to perform, but they were MIA. There were about 50 photographers gathered around the front of the stage and the group sent word that they would not come out on the stage until the photographers had left, which had been the agreement that Fuller and Tyrrel had made with this award show.
But the photographers basically just refused to move despite security trying to get them to leave. The band just refused to go out on stage for like quite a while until eventually they were just forced to go on the stage. As they got on the stage they started “Spice Up Your Life”, a performance of it. They were met with boos and jeers and whistling so loud that it was like heard above the music and the performance, like just like a concert of people booing and screaming at them.
Elyse: So mean, why?
Sinead: Because they were so late.
Ashley: So it wasn't like the photographers?
Sinead: It was like, the crowd was angry that they hadn't come out sooner.
Cheryl: And I think also like even if word like got out that like you know, like we don't perform with photographers, you look like a jerk as a band. So like I can totally understand the crowd just being like, what is nonsense.
But however Virgin Espana was quick to the group’s defense after the show, claiming that there was always a deal in place for the photographers to leave for performance. But they didn't. In a world where Fuller's team was still in charge, someone like Tyrelll would have identified and dealt with a photographer problem immediately. But because everyone surrounding them stuck with Fuller, They would have to deal with this type of stuff themselves, often with disastrous results.
Megan: There is something to be said about, there's a reason why famous people have entire teams, right? You can't do all that on your own. I’m little surprised, though, that they're smart women like they didn't sort of foresee that. I don't know,
Cheryl: I think this is something that really speaks to their naivete. They're making these big decisions, but they're very inexperienced. I genuinely think that getting rid of him was the right move. The wrong move was not having someone to step in. And I think I'm only realizing that now because part of your job as a manager is to make sure your team doesn't die, and they were dying.
[Chimes]
Cheryl: Because they did this without a team, as soon as the Fuller news went public, the press turns on the band hard. First up was a column in the mirror which said “Are you sick of the Spice Girls? Is it now all over for Britain's biggest pop phenomenon since the Beatles? These are the questions everyone asking as the once Fab Five come to terms with life without their manager.” Shortly afterwards, the same column ran this charming piece with the headline, “Which Spice Girl irritates you most?”
Sinead: So if you guys want to look in your spice chat we have which Spice Girl irritates you most?
Elyse: Oh my god.
Sinead: A full page spread of someone being a dick.
Elyse: Oh, no.
Steph: Why is Victoria so front and center?
Sinead: Perhaps she's the most annoying?
Elyse: Geri’s says “Geri can't keep her cake hole shut for more than five seconds.” This is so mean?
Megan: Are these phone numbers to vote?
Sinead: Yes, you could call in and vote and the week later they released the results, although I tried to find that one and couldn't find it. But yes, they dedicated phone lines for you to call in and tell them which one you thought was the most annoying.
Megan: Celebrities do and say a lot of dumb stuff. And I don't mind you calling them out on that. But like what has this got to do with anything? Like have you read some of these like they're just like dumb and personal.
Sinead: Would it surprise you guys to know that Piers Morgan was behind this?
Steph: Shocking.
[laughter]
Megan: Not at all.
Elyse: That tracks.
Sinead: So The Mirror had a lot of resentment towards the band because the Fuller team had given preferential access to The Sun and Piers Morgan really wanted to retaliate. So The Mirror was running really negative stories about the Spice Girls prior to Fuller being fired. But when Fuller was fired, it was like open season across the press and Morgan was behind some of these columns like This annoying on. Really they were just the beginning of an avalanche.
There were multiple columns that rather viciously blamed Fuller's firing on Geri alone, which is something we know is not entirely true because Mel B had been really involved as a leader as well and also the other three girls had their very legitimate reasons.
One such article had the charming title “Claws Are Out in Spice World” it featured a line that says “Rumor has it that Geri, known as fat old Spice, has in true girl power style assumed management duties for the time being”.
Elyse: What a confusing paragraph because it's obviously the fat shaming, horrible. It's an insult. So the insult sets the tone that this is an insult and they're like, oh, they're using girl power, which obviously implies that that too is an insult, very condescending, very misogynistic.
Sinead: There was also another headline that they titled Spite Girls, and the lede on that headline was “how the Fab Five plotted to get rid of the man who made them”
Elyse: Ew.
[Chimes]
Cheryl: Their PR guy Julian Henry had left with the Fuller exodus. So a new man, Alan Edwards, was brought on board. He had done PR for acts like the Rolling Stones and David Bowie and was very experienced. He thinks he’s seen it all. Edwards said “I was shocked by the volume and hostility of the calls. Journalists phoned me to tell me the group was finished in the wake of sacking Simon Fuller. One national paper went so far as to say that I was a nice enough bloke, but as long as I represented these fucking bimbos
Elyse: Woah.
Cheryl: -they were going to attack me at every opportunity”.
According to David Sinclair in his biography of the band “If ever a group had set themselves up to be knocked down, it was the Spice Girls”. They had harnessed the press during their rise to the giddiest of heights. Now they were vulnerable, and suddenly it was payback time. It all seemed utterly predictable in hindsight, but like Edwards the Girls themselves were severely taken aback by the wave of hostility that had suddenly engulfed them”
Sinead: The girls were shocked and they were hurt by the onslaught of bad press, they really didn't anticipate this particular consequence of firing Fuller. At the time Mel C was quoted as saying, “We think it is very sad. We think that we’ve done really well for Britain. Why can’t the press be proud of us and support us? And another thing that really confuses us was this: We’re the band. Why does anyone care about the manager? When I was a kid and I looked up to pop groups, I didn’t even know who their manager was.”
Elyse: Such a good point. I certainly never knew who their manager was like, why does it matter?
Sinead: Well, Victoria actually followed up in the same interview, this was right when all these headlines were coming out. “The thing about the media is that it’s a very male-dominated industry. Maybe they don’t even realise sometimes what they’re doing, but a lot of men, they liked the fact that they thought that a man was behind the Spice Girls. And they don’t like the fact that now it’s the five girls taking control. We’ve always been in control anyway, but I think they find the new situation quite hard to accept”
Elyse: Mmhmm. Nail on the head. It's funny too, because if you think of going to see another type of art, like if you go to see a play, for example, no one's in the audience being like someone's told those people what to say, someone directed this, what is this shit, these actors can't do anything. Like in any type of art, you're going to assume that there are performers and there are people backstage, supporting and running the show, you know, writing scripts, managing all of the day to day like, there's no world where, I guess maybe just like fine arts, but it's very rare to find a standalone artist that can pull off like stuff to the calibre and magnitude that these girls do.
Sinead: Absolutely. I mean, throughout the course of this podcast, all we've heard from industry insiders is we've never seen a group work this hard or get famous this fast. And it's never happened again since, this way. It's really a shame, but it just speaks to the amount of misogyny in the media that they were just obsessed with tearing them down.
So beyond the backlash, the record company was scared as fuck, like there was even talk about putting the Spice World movie straight to video, like straight to VHS. They were really afraid because they had never gotten so much bad press in such a short amount of time. With a full schedule for the next year, Virgin can't afford to have the girls fail, and they're pushing for new management for the group like ASAP.
At least one manager in the industry was caught confiding that she thought the job would be a nightmare to her colleagues. It was an open secret at the time that whoever was going to become their new manager would kind of act as a sixth member of the group. And so there definitely were people who were kind of like, no, it's not for me. Their newly hired PR guy, Alan Edwards that we just talked about, said of this time period “I promise you they really did it, and for longer than you would have thought. I remember sitting in enough meetings with them and it was very raw. The decision was made there and then, on the spot, which sometimes was great, sometimes a bit too intense. But there was no sanitizing process. It didn’t go through some secret person who they discussed everything with. They made the decisions. Which was part of the electricity and excitement of the whole Spice thing. It really was like that.”
Cheryl: So in January 1998, falling largely to the pressure of Virgin, the girls hired someone to act in kind of a quasi-manager role. The Girls hired Nancy Phillips, Nancy Phillips jokes that she's “hired to run the office” of the Spice Girls. Her previous management experience was largely with indie bands, like the Undertones, she got this call and she was completely shocked. But she says “No one who wanted to come in and control them in any way would have survived. That was absolutely clear.”
[Chimes]
Sinead: As for Simon Fuller, he was fine. [laughter] He took some time off, he went on to manage S Club 7, that was his invented band, and he also created Pop Idol, which led to the global idol franchise. So Simon Fuller is the man behind American Idol.
Elyse: So he's fine.
Sinead: He's fine.
Elyse: Thank God!
Megan: I was reading about some big TikTok deal he got recently. He's got - he's been fine since like, all the people he's managed.
[laughter]
Steph: And he even got a vacation before the Spice Girls did. He took some time off.
Sinead: Yeah, so you're right. In 2020, Fuller was signed by TikTok to work with the platform to create a supergroup for the platform, and Fuller would even go back to work with the girls again. in 2009 he managed the reunion tour. He currently is responsible for Brand Beckham with Victoria and David Beckham. He also acted as a manager for Emma when her music career began back in the early 2000s. The other three have never worked with him as their manager. So Mel B, Mel C, and Geri have not worked with Simon since other than on Reunion Tour stuff.
But yeah, that dude is fucking rich. I remember when we talked about “From Justin To Kelly”, that movie that we know Kim Fuller also wrote - that was totally because Simon Fuller invented American Idol.
Elyse: Mmmm, That makes sense.
Megan: That makes sense. Adds up.
Cheryl: In conclusion, by the fall of 1997, the Spice Girls were an established powerhouse team and making money in large part due to the efforts of their manager Simon Fuller in the machine he assembled around them, but their success took a major toll, especially for their personal lives and emotional well-being when they decided they had enough of him. These cracks we discussed in earlier episodes became a chasm.
Sinead: The backlash for having the gall to fire their largely male team was a sexist and punishing press cycle and a future which looked and felt really uncertain to all five of them. Only one thing was clear by December of 1997. And it was that the five of them were now firmly at the helm of their own phenomenon and going forward, they would be making all of the decisions.
Megan: Girl power!
Elyse: Girl Power.
Steph: Girl power.
Ashley: And it is really interesting to me that Geri’s carrying the weight of all of this.
Sinead: We're going to talk about what happened because of that in the next episode!
Ashley: Thank you so much for listening. See you next time! Spice Invaders is hosted by Sinead O'Brien, Cheryl Stone, Elyse Maxwell, Stephanie Smith, and Megan Arppe-Robertson. It's produced, researched and written by Sinead O'Brien and Cheryl Stone, and produced and edited by me, Ashley McDonough.
To see any visuals we talked about in this episode, as well as bonus content, be sure to follow us on instagram at @spiceinvaderspod. Thank you to Lukus Benoit for composing our theme song.
Episode mixed by Lukus Benoit.
Transcript created by Sinead O’Brien and Cheryl Stone