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Melanie Chisholm, AKA former Spice Girl Mel C, has explained how her struggle with eating disorders and depression goes back to a fractious moment at a BRIT Awards ceremony.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs today (February 23), the singer revealed she was close to being kicked out of the group before it officially launched back in 1996, owing to “a scuffle between me and Victoria [Beckham]”.
“I am putting this all together in my head now and I think that is where the start of a lot of my problems was,” she told host Lauren Laverne.
“I had to be so strict with myself after that, in case I messed it up. What made it so devastating was how important I realised it was to me,” Chisholm added.
“We were at the Brits and we all had a few bevvies. I was told if it happened again I would be out.”
The singer says that the pressure she felt to be perfect in the Spice Girls led to a pattern of anorexia, binge eating and depression that would define many of the years she spent with the iconic pop group.
“I was described as the plain one at the back. So I tried to make myself perfect. I ended up making myself really ill. I was anorexic for a few years. I was exercising obsessively and I ended up being incredibly depressed. I was in denial.”
Chisholm has opened up about her struggles with eating disorders before, including in an article for BBC Good Food in 2016, where she wrote: “I joined the Spice Girls when I was 20 and it was an insane time. I developed an eating disorder; I was in the spotlight, being photographed constantly, and I started to become self-conscious of my body image.”
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