FHM (January 2000) A Ginger Production
You must have been really chuffed when your single whupped Emma Bunton's? It means everything to go to the top of the charts. But I don't want the joy of being number one to be overshadowed by who was at number two.
I had a party and got really, really drunk. I can't handle my drink and I got carried out at about 9.30pm. My driver just picked me up. I was so embarrassed. But I think I was entitled to get drunk. You probably needed to get pissed after the Chris Evans story broke? Yeah, that week was pretty mad. It was just like one big rollercoaster. Do you get frustrated when you're not getting any? Or can you just turn off your sex drive? No, of course I get frustrated. There are times when you get very hormonal and just want to be with somebody. One day I might want to cuddle up to someone, and then at other times you just want to be satisfied on more of a, er, primal level. But I just override it.
I've got a few rules when it comes to men. Firstly, he has to love his mother, because, if you look at Freud, men always try to turn their partners into their mothers. And secondly, he has to be passionate about what he does, even if it's gardening. I'd need him to love those flower beds. How about physically? I do like tall men, although I've never actually had a tall boyfriend before. As for the typical ideals like the washboard stomach - that doesn't really bother me. It's actually quite comforting to go out with a man with a tyre round his belly. The other Spice Girls have been pretty rude about your singing. So here's your chance to have a dig back - for starters, Mel B's dreadful version of Word Up is surely ripe for a stinging retort? I only heard that once so I couldn't really comment. In any case, I don't think any of the Spice Girls would intentionally say something nasty about me. And everyone's entitled to their opinion.
I really don't know. I think everyone's can be pretty bad after a long day. You just won't rise to it, will you? Maybe you're biting your tongue so you can do the band reunion in ten years' time? It's too early to say whether I'd do that. I keep in touch with them all by letter, but I've tried to give them the space to be a foursome and I've needed space to be solo. After the Spice Girls split, George Michael invited you to holiday in his French mansion. Would you have been so keen if Andrew Ridgeley had invited you to go surfing with him in Cornwall? Ha! Well, I'd already met George and I was instinctively drawn to him. I can't say that about Andrew Ridgeley because I've never met him.
Well, I did fancy him, but he's gay so I don't even go there. He and his boyfriend Kenny have been like my surrogate boyfriends - without the sex. You had a "gay" experience on TFI Friday. How did you end up snogging Kylie? On the show, everyone was encouraging us to arm wrestle and I was reluctant because it would be seen as girls being bitchy. So she said, "Why don't we have a kiss first?" I knew most men would give their right arm to kiss Kylie, so I obliged. She was fantastic - a great kisser. Had you ever kissed a girl before? Yes. I think all girls do that. But it's not a regular occurrence. You've built a reputation for being a shrewd business operator. Does that mean you're tight with your cash?
You must be referring to the huge the former monastery set in 18 acres of Buckinghamshire countryside you moved into earlier this year. No, I don't consider buying a house to be extravagant. I think paying over the odds for a face cream that has got nice packaging is more extravagant. The old Catholic guilt comes into play. 18 acres is a lot of space for a girl to fill. Have you had any decent parties yet? I had one for my birthday this year, back in August. I completely went for it and invited 320 people. I was nervous that nobody would come but in the end I only had eight no-shows, which isn't bad. I had a big funfair outside in my back garden and then made everyone play Pass The Parcel. Were you one of the kids at school who was always snogging behind the bike sheds?
Bald? You mean "down below"? That's right. And I always used to say: "You wait and see, I'll have bigger breasts than all of you. I didn't even get my first snog 'till I was about 13. I think the guy was very disappointed because he went to put his hand up my top and there was nothing there. At what age did you first have sex? I was 17. Was it any cop? My imagination was better than the reality. I was dreaming of From Here To Eternity whereas in fact it was more a case of: "Is that it?" It happened in a really seedy, horrible bedsit in Olympia. He was an older guy, so I was pretending that it was a really grown-up affair. source: fhm  |
The
first half of 1999 was a disaster for Geri Halliwell. Vulnerable
and depressed, the brassy Watford lass who had pranced about
in Union Jack dresses and fondled Prince Charles as part of
the Spice Girls had, in a few months, become an over-earnest
and bedraggled loner whose main consolations in life were
a mountain of self-help literature and a burgeoning friendship
with George Michael. To make matters worse, not only was her
debut album - Schizophonic - trounced by Boyzone's By Request,
which was released on the same day last June, but the first
single from it, Look At Me, also failed to reach number one.
The future of her solo career, in which EMI had invested over
£3 million, was beginning to look perilous. 
Then,
at the end of the summer, the gloom clouds began to lift.
In the video for her second solo single, Mi Chico Latino,
a bikini-clad Geri smiled and pouted, the old saucy glint
back in her eye. It went straight to number one and by the
time of the FHM shoot, Schizophonic had shifted over 1.5 million
copies worldwide. The self-help books have also been ditched
- on the day of the shoot, she is ploughing through The Girls'
Guide To Hunting and Fishing, by Melissa Bank. And perhaps
most significantly, she is happy to wear the kind of sexy
get-ups which would have been considered too raunchy even
for the Spice Girls. "I haven't taken
my clothes off in front of a camera for ages," she
purrs posing naked across a double bed. Then, after telling
FHM that her last goal for the year was to find a boyfriend,
comes the bombshell that she's been stepping out with Chris
Evans. Sadly the relationship is no more, but there will almost
certainly be more twists to the Geri Halliwell story in 2000...
How
did you celebrate? 
When
you were on your "proactive" search, what qualities were you
looking for?
OK,
which one of the four witches had the worst body odour?
If
George was straight, would you go out with him? 
I
certainly come from a background of counting the pennies -
always turning the lights off to save on electricity. I'm
careful about the little purchases, but then I'll get all
flamboyant and splash out on the bigger stuff. 
I
went to an all girls school, so doing that kind of stuff was
pretty difficult. We did have joint discos with the local
boys' school, but I was very under-developed as a girl - flat
as a pancake. So while everyone else was upstairs getting
groped, I'd be downstairs singing along to "True Blue". It
even got to the point where my nickname was "bald".