The Spice Girls gave something rather special to their audience this week – no, Geri Halliwell didn't do the decent thing and cover herself up for once, but the Spice Girls all brought their children onstage.
During their performance of Mama at the O2 arena in London on Tuesday night, it's been reported that most of the Spice Girls brought their children onstage to say hello to the thousands of buyerless eBay touts who make up their audience these days. In the middle of the song Victoria Beckham, Mel B and Emma Bunton all brought their kids out on stage. In fact, the only Spice Girl mother not to introduce her child to the audience was Geri Halliwell, for fear that the effect of 20,000 people all derisively going "pffft" at the same time after hearing the name Bluebell Madonna would knock over a lighting rig or flip the stage upside down or something.
Now that The Spice Girls world tour has hit its absurdly long residency at London's O2 arena, the girls can put all their troubles behind them. They don't have to worry about gimmicky sales promotions or appalling Tesco adverts, tanking comeback singles or half-sold concerts, because they're in London, and everyone in London loves the Spice Girls.
These London concerts mean so much to the Spice Girls that not even Emma Bunton's buggered-up ankle can stop the girls doing what they love best – tightly grinning through their reported inter-group rucks and performing the same decade-old songs in exactly the same way night after night after night. Except for Tuesday night, that is, when the Spice Girls planned something slightly different.
According to reports, the Spice Girls brought their children onstage during their performance of Mama. It was a joyous moment for sure – you'd need to have a heart as cold as ice not to well up at the sight of six frightened children being hauled in front of tens of thousands of hysterically-screaming strangers by their oddly-dressed mothers. The Press Association reports:
Victoria Beckham decked out her boys, Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz in matching T-shirts emblazoned with the words 'POSH'. Baby Spice Emma Bunton cuddled four-month-old son Beau, while Mel B brought along daughters Phoenix Chi and Angel Iris. The children wore bright green ear muffs to protect them against the noise. Geri Halliwell's daughter Bluebell was the only Spice offspring missing.
For what it's worth, Mel C couldn't bring any children onstage because she hasn't had any yet. But don't be sad, because she doesn't need children – she's got her pet cats, which are almost like babies in the sense that she dresses them up as babies, makes them sleep in cots, constantly tries to enrol them in local nursery schools, carries them around in a papoose, weens them on a diet of milk direct from her own breast and gets angry if you refer to them as cats instead of people.
Anyway, isn't it a weird song choice to bring the Spice Kids out on? Mama is a song that's all about how much the Spice Girls love their mothers, and by bringing their children out, surely the implication is that the Spice Girls are singing it to themselves. In fact, they might as well have just sung a song called The Spice Girls Are Brilliant – a statement that's at best wrong and at worst dangerous.
But that's just a minor quibble. Judging by the reaction that they got with their children, it seems as if audiences love watching the Spice Girls make literal displays of their songs like this. Hopefully it'll continue throughout their London residency – perhaps for Spice Up Your Life the girls can rub freshly-chopped chillies into their eyes or mace each other.
And the prospect of what they'd do during Stop is just too exciting to bear.
Read more: