01. Who is she?
Melanie Janine Brown was born on May 29th 1975, in Leeds, England. Daughter of Andrea and Martin Brown, Mel was one of the 30 children from Intake High School selected to receive special training in drama, dance and music.
As a teenager, she was a dance and aerobics teacher, sold advertising spaces in newspapers, won Leeds Weekly News’ beauty contest and went to Northern School of Contemporary Dance. Melanie also played a small role on the TV series Coronation Street.
In 1994, Mel participated on the auditions announced on the newspaper The Stage for the formation of a girl band.

02. Mel B meeting Melanie C:
Mel B tells: "Melanie Chisholm had a really good voice and was one of those perfect dancers. Every move was exactly right. She seemed very nice and easy to get on with and had a strangely calming effect on everyone. She gave the impression that she was someone who could approach any situation with a smile. You would have thought that she didn't have a bad-tempered bone in her body. (Little did I know that we'd get into a fistfight a couple of years later when she tried to break up an argument between me and geri.)"

03. The house in Maidenhead:
Mel shared a room with Melanie C at the Maidenhead home the Spice Girls lived in before fame: : "I shared a double bed with Mel C and slept on the right nearest the door. Melanie snored very loudly because she had something wrong with her sinuses. Our room was really cool. It had light pink chipwood walls and red bedding. I put a red lightbulb in the main socket, which made the room look like a brothel from the outside. Melanie seemed quiet and shy and easygoing at first and it was only later that she came out of herself. We bonded instantly - partly because we were both Northerners living with a bunch of Southerners who just didn't get it a lot of the time, but mainly because we were really compatible as friends and flatmates."
"Melanie and I had an underlying understanding of each other. At the time I was going through a lot of emotional crap, Melanie was always covering for me. For some reason, though, I couldn't open up to her. I think I was unable to accept that somebody could be so nice to me without having an ulterior motive. I couldn't figure her out, even though - or perhaps because - she was really quite straightforward and normal. She was very affectionate and loving and it freaked me out. She'd give me a hug and I'd be like, 'Get off me! What are you doing?' 'What's wrong with you?' she'd ask, genuinely concerned. It became a pattern of behaviour - I was horrible to her, she was nice to me."

04. Why Scary?
Big hair, loud laughter and a pierced tongue in the 90’s! It didn’t took long for Top Of The Pops Magazine to nickname her Scary Spice!

05. Mels' duet:
During the Spice Girls tours in 1998, Mel B and Mel C sang Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves together, song previously recorded by Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin. They also performed the song on the TV show TFI Friday, in 1998.

06. "We are family".
Mel B had a daughter in 1999, called Phoenix Chi, with the Spice Girls’ ex-dancer Jimmy Gulzar. They got divorced in 2000. In 2007, Mel B gave birth to Angel Iris, daughter of the American actor Eddie Murphy.

07. More about Mel B:
Learn more about Mel B on her official website www.melaniebrown.com