Spice Girls. Sean Smith

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      At dance classes Melanie made new friends, including a local girl, Charlotte Henderson, who remains her closest friend, despite all the ups and downs of later years. Another was Rebecca Callard, a petite, pretty girl, whose mother is the popular Coronation Street actress Beverley Callard, who plays Liz McDonald in the evergreen soap.

      The two teenagers saw little of one another at Jean Pearce but became best pals when they started senior school and bumped into each other on the first day. They were the new girls at the Intake High School in the West Leeds district of Bramley. The focus there was less on traditional academic work and more on the arts subjects that interested them – music, drama and dance.

      Rebecca, who would go on to become a successful actress, had already appeared on TV, was good fun and introduced Melanie to the delights of smoking Marlboro Lights. She also joined her for sticky-bun binges. The two girls used to spend their lunch money on cakes and pastries and eat the lot in one break. Surprisingly, Melanie never seemed to put on weight. The teenagers were very much partners in crime, even double-dating twin brothers at one time.

      Neither girl was considered star material at school. They managed very small roles in a version of the musical Godspell but that was about it. The Brown household was not especially musical, and Melanie’s love of dance was not matched by an overwhelming desire to become a concert pianist or a professional singer. She didn’t have singing lessons until much later, preferring to release her pent-up energy by bashing the drums.

Like most teenagers, she watched Top of the Pops every week. Rebecca was a big fan of Bros but Melanie couldn’t bear them. Instead, she preferred two of the biggest female artists of the eighties. Both were strong figures. First was Tracy Chapman, whose multi-million-selling self-titled first album remains a pop classic. She sang ‘Fast Car’ and ‘Talkin’ Bout a Revolution’ at the seventieth-birthday tribute to Nelson Mandela at Wembley in June 1988 when Melanie was thirteen. They were arguably the highlights of the whole event, especially as she sang them twice, filling in when Stevie Wonder had an equipment problem.

      Secondly, Melanie loved Neneh Cherry, who was one of the few mixed-race pop stars at the time. Neneh’s father was from Sierra Leone and her mother from Sweden. She had a distinctive style that included large medallions and rugby shirts that Melanie tried earnestly to copy.

      Neneh caused a mild sensation when she performed her hit ‘Buffalo Stance’ on Top of the Pops in the autumn of that year. She was the first artist to appear on the show while heavily pregnant, which was not a look normally endorsed by the male-dominated music business. It was a bold move by a young woman who defied convention throughout her career – someone with whom Melanie Brown could readily identify. Nearly ten years later, a pregnant Melanie would follow that particular girl-power lead.

      Needless to say, Neneh’s ‘stance’ caused a media storm. One male TV interviewer asked if it was safe for her to go on stage in her condition and received a sharp riposte: ‘Of course. I’m not ill.’ Neneh later elaborated, ‘I didn’t feel being pregnant took anything away from my sexuality, who I am, the woman.’

      Melanie would stand in front of the mirror in her bedroom at home and pretend to be her favourite star, singing along, just as a million girls would later do when ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls was an anthem for a young female generation.

Those schooldays were basically happy and uneventful for Melanie, even though she was occasionally chased home from school to her family’s house in Kirkstall, a fifteen-minute walk but much faster when you had to run like the wind.

      It came as a great shock to everyone, then, when such a vibrant girl tried to take her own life for the first time. Melanie revealed this shocking event in her autobiography Catch a Fire, published in 2002 after the Spice Girls had finally split up. Her account is of an unhappy teenager feeling miserable and out of step with a world that didn’t understand her. She even fell out with Rebecca over a cruel and thoughtless remark Melanie had made. They didn’t speak for seven months.

      And then she was nearly expelled from school for her part in composing an obscene poison-pen letter. Life seemed to be going downhill very fast and Melanie started hoarding extra-strong aspirin, building up a stash by taking one or two at a time from the bathroom cabinet. Eventually she had more than enough to overdose, so she wrote a note and took the pills one at a time while she sobbed her heart out.

      Luckily her mum had a headache that night and realised what was going on when she went looking for some tablets. Melanie was rushed to hospital where doctors induced her to vomit the undigested pills. Afterwards the suicide attempt became an unspoken secret at home and at school, where nobody discussed it with her.

      Looking back, Melanie stressed that nothing was ever so serious that it was worth taking your own life. Her mantra was: ‘Never let yourself get like that again, no matter what happens.’ It was sound and sensible advice that, sadly, she was unable to follow.

While she would never forget that dramatic event, Melanie resumed normal life as a young teenager. She didn’t go out much but went into town to celebrate her fifteenth birthday with Rebecca, both girls dressed to kill in hot pants. They saw the movie Ghostbusters II starring Bill Murray, but their first stop was Pizzaland where, to their surprise, they were able to order drinks, two white wine spritzers. Rebecca recalled, ‘Amazingly, I got served that night – the only time ever – and we spent the rest of the night giggling like fools.’

      Melanie was restless to achieve. Even though she was not yet sixteen and still at Intake, she wanted to get on with her dancing career, which she saw as a passport to fame. She was in the middle of her GCSE revision when she decided to bunk off school and go for an audition in Blackpool. Her mum covered for her. Martin would have gone ballistic if he had discovered what was happening. He was a great believer in the value of education.

      Melanie sailed through the audition and left home for the first time in June 1991, a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday. She spent the summer in Blackpool, dancing in two shows: in the afternoons she dressed in a cheerleader outfit for an open-air rock ’n’ roll extravaganza called The Jump and Jive Show. For her evening engagement she changed into a catsuit for a pre-show entertainment at the Horseshoe Bar on Pleasure Beach.

      The one drawback for Melanie was leaving her home comforts in Leeds to live in digs, although her mum drove over every week to make sure she was eating properly. Her dad was particularly strict with his teenage daughter so it was a relief to have a taste of freedom. Inevitably, his old-fashioned attitude had only fuelled Melanie’s rebellious nature.

      Back in Leeds she met her first serious boyfriend. She had caught the eye of handsome footballer Steve Mulrain one night when she sneaked out of home to go to the ever-popular Warehouse club in Somers Street. He noticed her straight away: ‘She looked sensational. She had on a short tight silver dress with black knee-high boots.’

Melanie pretended not to be bothered, which had the desired effect of grabbing Steve’s attention, and by the end of the evening she had agreed to go out on a proper date. He was nearly three years older than her and quite a catch.

      Steve had joined Leeds United as an apprentice in the summer of 1991, at a time when the club was one of the top sides in the country. He remained her boyfriend for more than two years and she described him as her first love; a true love. She gushed, ‘Our relationship was absolute heaven.’

      Originally a Londoner from Lambeth, he never made the jump to the first team, which was a disappointment as Leeds United won the last-ever First Division title in the 1991–2 season. By the end of the following year, he was the only black player on the books of Rochdale in the third division while Leeds were part of the inaugural Premiership.

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