SPICE Girl Mel B has revealed how she was left so broke after walking out on her abusive marriage that she took to shopping in budget stores Lidl and Costco to save cash.
Melanie Brown, 48, returned to her native Leeds in 2019 — a year after divorcing abusive ex Stephen Belafonte.
But she was so drained of cash following the ten-year marriage she was forced to move in to mum Andrea’s bungalow with her three kids.
Mel, who has made more than £80million in her career, says: “People will assume, ‘She’s rich, she’s a Spice Girl’.
“But I went from performing to thousands at Wembley on the Spice Girls’ 13-date Reunion Tour in 2019 to squeezing into my mum’s with my kids sleeping in bed with me.
“I didn’t expect that to happen in my 40s after a successful career but I had nowhere else to go.
“Because I was so badly affected financially from my relationship, I had to pick up the pieces.”
When Melanie Brown walked out of her abusive ten-year marriage in 2017 she had just £700 in the bank with costly divorce and custody battles to fight.
It has taken her five years to save the cash to move out of her mum’s, and she finally exchanged on a converted farmhouse in West Yorkshire earlier this month.
Although Mel had carved out a successful career during her ten-year stint living in Los Angeles, appearing in the US version of Strictly, Dancing With The Stars, and as a judge on America’s Got Talent, she claims she lost control of her fortune while married to film producer Belafonte, 48.
Sparkling Spice
But in the wake of her split, Mel has rebuilt.
She was Seahorse on The Masked Singer in 2021, is a judge on the show’s Australian version and this year returned to the America’s Got Talent panel.
She adds: “Luckily, I have always been a hard worker. I thoroughly enjoy my job and have thrown myself into it.
“I spend a lot of time speaking to abuse survivors and I want to show abuse, including financial abuse, can happen to anyone, and you can build yourself back up.”
Mel recalls how she went from having a loft apartment in LA, a ten-bed pile in Marlow, Bucks, and owning an impressive collection of furniture and art, to doing the weekly shop at budget stores.
She says: “In LA I hadn’t bought a pint of milk in years.
“But back home I would buy in bulk from Costco and got really into shopping in Aldi and Lidl.
After being in an abusive relationship for years you really have to rebuild yourself inside and out
Mel B
“It was Covid times and I would put on my face mask and no one would recognise me.
“I stood in a queue for the first time in a long time. No one batted an eyelid.
“After being in an abusive relationship for years you really have to rebuild yourself inside and out. Nobody can do that apart from you.
“Having to budget and learn how much a packet of crisps costs again kind of felt like me reclaiming my power.
“I felt I went back to my Leeds roots, and I have never forgotten where I came from.”
Mel also switched from Scary Spice to Sparkling Spice.
She says: “I love cleaning. If there is something abnormal going on, like I am fighting in the courts, steaming the floors or doing laundry makes me feel normal and OK.
“I’ve tried out every steamer for floors. Seeing how clean something is gives me instant gratification.”
Astonishingly, the singer had become so isolated in LA that there were everyday things she was clueless about.
She says: “I would say to people, ‘Do you know there is this service called Amazon that delivers to your door?’ And they would be like, ‘Of course!’
“But I didn’t have access to a credit card during my relationship and was working 24/7.”
Mel, awarded an MBE in 2022 for her work as a patron for domestic abusecharity Women’s Aid, says of her time with Belafonte: “I had always taken care of my own money but over time I didn’t worry about money because in my eyes he was taking care of it.
“But afterwards I realised, ‘Oh my God, I am going to have to start from scratch, Ground Zero’.”
Scary Spice admits that even when safely cocooned in her mum’s bungalow, with her ex thousands of miles away, she struggled to shake off the trauma of that relationship.
She says: “The past five years living with my mum have been intense.
“When you are in an abusive relationship it affects your whole family and I was really angry at my mum for a while.
You have to build those relationships back up and living in that small bungalow saved ours because there was no escape
Mel B
“I was like, ‘Why didn’t you come and get me when I was with Stephen?’
“But I didn’t know he was calling her and yelling at her and she didn’t know how to reach me.
“You have to build those relationships back up and living in that small bungalow saved ours because there was no escape.
“We joked it was like Last Of The SummerWine meets One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
“My mum would say, ‘But you’ve left him, you’re away, you’re fine’. But it isn’t like that.
“A friend once asked me what it was like being in my head.
“The only way I could describe it was it is like being in a house where a baby is crying but you can never find the room where the baby is.
“I’m a work in progress. But look how far I’ve come.
“A few years ago if a door slammed I would jump out of my skin. Now I think, ‘It’s just a door’.”
Continuing hurt
A continuing hurt has been separation from youngest child Madison, since courts ruled after expensive custody wrangling that, as a US citizen, the 12-year-old must live with dad Belafonte, who also has daughter Giselle, 19.
Mel, also mum to 16-year-old Angel, from a romance with actor Eddie Murphy, and Phoenix, 25, from a previous marriage to dancer Jimmy Gulzar, now sees Madison only in school holidays.
She says: “It is like having an arm cut off. She is my baby. I have spent a fortune on legal battles but at least she spends big chunks of time here.
“In the eyes of the court I’m the big earner and have to pay his court fees as well as my own.
“I’ve been campaigning through my work on behalf of Women’s Aid for the court system to better understand financial abuse.”
Mel reached a divorce settlement in August 2018 which involved all abuse charges being dropped.
Pivotal in rebuilding her self-esteem has been her fiancé, Leeds hairdresser Rory McPhee, 36.
She says: “He is a family friend and I have known him for a long time. So there was a foundation of trust and respect.
“And he is a great hairdresser! When I came back home in 2019 he nurtured my curls back and at the same time nurtured my trust and affection, and it just grew bit by bit.
Rory can’t even understand how someone would even raise their voice to a woman
Mel B
“I kept pushing him away, saying, ‘I’m damaged goods’.
“But Rory can’t even understand how someone would even raise their voice to a woman. He is a great influence on me. If I am getting manic he can calm me.”
This year marks three decades since the Spice Girls formed and rumours of reunion gigs have been rife, although Sporty Spice (Mel C) yesterday claimed it was just talk.
Mel B adds: “All our mums get along. If there is a bit of a tiff or we get excited about something, all the mums seem to know everything first.
“My mum will be like, ‘I just got off the phone to Pauline (Baby Spice Emma Bunton’s mother) and I hear you are doing . . . ’”
Her bandmates have always been supportive.
She says: “Emma bawled her eyes out when she read my book (2018 memoir Brutally Honest).
“But there was nothing she or any of them could have done, I lied to everyone about my relationship, including myself.”
Mel says the band have recently supported Ginger Spice (Geri Horner) who has stood by her husband, Red Bull F1 boss Christian Horner, amid a probe into claims— which he vehemently denies — that he sent suggestive texts to a female colleague.
Mel says: “We have a WhatsApp group and we have sent messages.”
Mel has a packed diary this year, but many engagements seem a long way from her jet-set Spice days.
She says: “I’m going to Buckingham Palace in a few weeks for an International Women’s Day event with the Queen.
“Later in the year I am addressing the Women’s Institute at the Royal Albert Hall. It’s mad, I’m joining the Jam and Jerusalem crowd.”
Mel’s updated Brutally Honest, written with Louise Gannon (Quadrille, £10.99), is republished on March 7.
Exclusive extracts are in this week’s Sun on Sunday.
A republished version of Mel B’s Brutally Honest releases on March 7[/caption]