Viva Forever! - Reliving the Spice Girls years

Seeing the Spice Girls reunited to promote the new musical based on their songs was like stepping back in time.

In the mid-1990s, when Posh, Scary, Sporty, Ginger and Baby were at the height of their fame, my daughter and her friends were captivated by them. No party was complete without Wannabe and Spice Up Your Life belting out of the CD player (I know, it was a long time ago) and the primary school playground was full of little girls discussing which Spice Girl was their favourite. Sadly, Melanie Chisholm (aka Sporty) never featured because she wore boring tracksuits whereas the others all got glitter, sparkles and Union Jack dresses.

But when the Spice Girls assembled yesterday I reckoned Melanie C and Emma Bunton looked the happiest by a long chalk. Melanie Brown and Geri Halliwell were still trying to be the stars of the show, while Victoria Beckham, now a hot-shot fashion designer who counts Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes among her best pals, looked like she didn’t want to be there at all. Once the launch was over she headed straight back to LA to tuck her baby daughter Harper in. “I’d love to stay and hang out with the girls but I’m desperate to see her before she goes to bed,” she said. 

The Spice Girls are all in their late 30s now and won’t actually feature in Viva Forever!, the musical that’s been created by producer Judy Craymer and written by comedienne Jennifer Saunders. The show, which Saunders wanted to do because her three daughters loved the Spice Girls when they were growing up, weaves the band’s songs into a drama about a girl called Viva who is swept into the world of instant celebrity.

Actually, if I got my way I’d give Melanie C a part in it straight away. I saw her in Blood Brothers a few years ago and she was sensational. Aside from her sporty tracksuits, jaunty pony-tail and onstage back flips, Melanie C was best known for being the only Spice Girl who could actually sing. Well, she can act too. She grew up on Merseyside and was utterly compelling as Mrs Johnstone, the hard-pressed Liverpudlian mum who agrees to give one of her twin sons away.

I’ve seen Willy Russell’s wonderful play several times during its 29-year history but Melanie C knocked spots off the other actresses I’ve seen in the part. Her voice was stunning and she had exactly the right blend of toughness and vulnerability to make the character believable.

Viva Forever! opens in London in December and is set to be a smash hit. I’m definitely going to book tickets and take my daughter with me…

The first and last time I cut someone's hair

Caitlin Moran is the most talented columnist of her generation – and the funniest too. When I heard her interview Ab Fab creator Jennifer Saunders recently, she was just as funny in real life as she is on the page.

She’s won just about every journalistic prize going and now it looks as though she’s moving into a different stratosphere. The Guardian reported this weekend that she’s written the pilot for a Channel 4 sitcom about an overweight 16 year old looking for a boyfriend. If it’s successful, it could be followed by a six-part series.

As usual, Moran has chosen a subject that every woman, whether they’re 16 or 60, can identify with. There’s no doubt about it, 16 is a tricky age for girls. They’re not children any more, but they’re not really adults either.

When I was 16 I left my ultra-strict girls’ school to go to a boys’ school that had just started taking girls. Tucked away in the wilds of Dorset, there were 30 girls and 450 boys. The girls were considered such an exotic species that 450 pairs of eyes followed us wherever we went, clocking what we were wearing, who our friends were and which boys we liked. It’s hard to believe now but some boys were so insensitive that they’d even comment on who’d put on weight and who’d lost it. One day I was about to take a bite out of a doughnut when a boy of about 14 whizzed past and plucked it from my plate. “You won’t want that,” he said. “It’ll make you fat…”

Actually, without meaning to, I got my revenge a few months later. I’m the most cack-handed person on the planet and for some reason the same boy asked me to cut his hair. I tried my best, I really did, but the result was a complete disaster – wonky fringe, too short one side and too long the other. He never asked me again…

Caitlin Moran and Jennifer Saunders - two of the funniest women in the country

A queue stretching right down the Euston Road, a packed theatre and two of the funniest women in the country in conversation on the stage.

Those were the ingredients for the latest recording of Chain Reaction, the BBC Radio 4 series where a well-known figure interviews someone they admire. They in turn choose someone else to interview – and so the baton gets passed down the line.

This week it was the turn of Times megastar columnist Caitlin Moran, who’d chosen to interview comedienne and Absolutely Fabulous creator Jennifer Saunders. Or as Moran put it, “I asked Jennifer Saunders out on a blind date on the radio and she said ‘yes.’”

The programme was recorded at London's Shaw Theatre and won’t be broadcast till August. But as the pair’s sparkling 75-minute conversation will be cut to 30 minutes, I thought I’d report some of my favourite bits. In fact wannabe journalists could learn a lot from the brilliant Moran in action as an interviewer. Far from sticking to safe, boring questions, the conversation ranged from whether Saunders considered herself a feminist (yes) to the last time she got drunk to the last time she called 999.

Actually, if any of her one-liners were anything to go by, Moran could probably earn a bob or two as a comedienne herself. When Saunders told her she’d spent the afternoon with her daughters and “we all had hair and nails,” Moran insouciantly inquired: “Why, didn’t you have any before?”

Along the way, Saunders revealed that she was a “forces kid” who moved house every two years. On arriving at a new school, “I’d have to learn to assimilate and not be noticed and be everyone’s friend.”  She and Dawn French started their comedy act for themselves and used to howl with laughter in the flat they shared.

Saunders, who’s married to comic Adrian Edmondson, is always surprised when people know who she is. When Moran asked “out of ten how famous are you?” Saunders thought she was about a seven. “I reckon you are more than a seven, love,” quipped Moran quick as a flash.

Oh, and just a few other things we learned along the way:

1. Saunders loves the film Bridesmaids – “they’re such strong comedy performers.”
2. No one ever calls her Jenny – she’s either Jen, Fer or Jennifer.
3. She thought she’d go on Twitter “for five minutes, for research,” – “and then I got hooked.”
4. She decided to write Viva Forever, the Spice Girls musical, because her three daughters loved the girl band when they were growing up. It opens in December and as she told Moran, “I really am quite pleased with it.”
5. She’s a self-confessed procrastinator.

 PS. This was the Hogwarts-type view of St Pancras from the queue outside the Shaw Theatre…