Mel B has claimed she wouldn’t be able to be called Scary Spice today as people would find it offensive.
The singer, 48, who originally shot to fame as one fifth of chart-topping girlband the Spice Girls in the 1990s, was given the moniker by a journalist when they first burst onto the scene and it has stuck with her ever since.
When the Wannabe hit-maker was about how she felt about being known as Scary Spice three decades on during a new interview on Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast, she replied: “I think now we're a bit too politically correct. I calmed down in these last few years.“Before, if you were to interview me I'd be like ‘Show me your questions’. I'd be the protector of the group that comes in there like. ‘Hold on a minute’.“That can be seen as maybe being a bit too Northern, or maybe being a bit too feisty, or scary, so that name was given - and I love it.
The mum-of-two said her nickname came from the “plain fact” that she is “a bit scary” with “larger than life hair”.
She added: “That's just me. But, in this day and age, somebody would of taken offence by that. But I don't take offence by it.
“Whether you're black, white, mixed, there's a bit of scary in all of us.”
Elaborating further, she continued: “And, I just want to be clear, when those names got given to us - it was by a lazy journalist from some teeny poppy magazine and he couldn't be bothered to remember our full names.
“So he was like, well that one looks a bit scary because she has already snatched my notes and she's got all this crazy hair and leopard print nails, so he just named us off the rack like that.
“We were all like, God, I quite like my name.”
Despite the years that have passed, Mel B insists that deep down they are still the same.
“It's funny because to this day, Emma loves pink - and if she could have her way she'd put her hair in ponytails,” she mused.
“Mel C, you can never get her out of a tracksuit, and she always has her hair in a ponytail.
“Victoria's very slick and elegant. Geri, she's gone through a bit of a change, but she's still that vivacious Union Jack girl underneath her being the lady of the manner.
“We're all exactly the same which is lovely considering we started when we were 17, 18, 19, and we're now 48, 49, 50.”
