LITMIR.BIZ

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Chris’s curiosity got the better of him and he told her to put the girl through. He soon discovered for himself that Geri Halliwell was a force of nature. She had seen the original advertisement in the Stage and had kept in touch to let them know how keen she was, but on the day she was nowhere to be seen.

      Several possible explanations for her absence were volunteered. One was that she had been on a skiing trip and suffered sunburn. Another was that she had needed to make a flying visit to her grandmother in Spain. Chris was impressed by her audacity in keeping her foot in the door. He could see from the photos she sent in that she was sexy without being Hollywood glamorous.

‘She was very bubbly on the phone and we wanted to see her. It didn’t dawn on me at the time but I think she obviously knew she would have failed in an early-round audition and she wanted to bypass that. I think she’d worked that one out and I think that was her strategy.’

      Geri almost admitted as much when she said, ‘I didn’t think I would have got an audition because my vocal technique was not very good then.’ If it was her game plan, it paid off because Chris took a chance and invited her to the call-back at Nomis Studios in West London.

      Unlike Melanie Brown and Victoria Adams, Geri hadn’t spent half her time as a youngster attending dancing classes. She didn’t have any trophies and cups on the sideboard or framed photographs of her singing sweetly in a stage musical. But somewhere along the line she had developed an overwhelming desire to be famous. Chris noted, ‘She was incredibly hungry for fame.’

      Geraldine Halliwell is one of the few women that Kylie Minogue could look in the eye. She is very petite – not much more than an inch or two over five feet. As a child she showed no inclination to grow. Her Spanish-born mother was so concerned at her small offspring that when Geri was nine she took her to see a specialist doctor to find out if she needed medical help. Her Spanish relatives helpfully nicknamed the little girl La Enana which translates as ‘the Dwarf’. It wasn’t exactly an improvement on her earlier pet name, Cacitas, meaning ‘Little Poos’.

      Her mother, Ana Maria Hidalgo, was a stunning girl from a village near the historic city of Huesca in north-eastern Spain. She came to London when she was twenty-one to work as an au-pair and fell for the dubious charms of Laurence Halliwell, whom Geri describes as a ‘total rogue’. He was a ‘car-dealer, entrepreneur, womaniser and chancer’.

He spotted Ana in Oxford Street and decided to chat her up. He was forty-four when they married after just a seven-week courtship. He turned out not to be the successful businessman his new wife thought he was, and throughout Geri’s childhood her mother worked as a cleaner to keep the family above the breadline. Laurence had reached the age of fifty when Geraldine Estelle Halliwell was born in the maternity wing of Watford General Hospital on 6 August 1972. They already had a son, Max, five, and a daughter, Natalie, three. The family home throughout Geri’s childhood was in Jubilee Road, Watford, a ten-minute walk to the shops in St Albans Road.

      The three-bedroom semi-detached house was in a sombre street in a poorer area of the town but there’s a world of difference between this part of Watford and the grim and dangerous sink estates of the north of England. Geri was a happy and outgoing child, who, as the youngest, was more than a little spoilt. She was also prone to telling little white lies, something she was still apt to do when drumming up publicity as an ambitious performer. Her one-time claim that her mum had aristocratic ancestry was just one of her good-natured fibs.

      She shared a room with her big sister, who, for the most part, acted as a protector, although they were only at junior school together. They weren’t alike – Geri was far more extrovert – but they developed a strong bond that completely survived fame. Geri rather sweetly said that she was Natalie’s ‘little shadow’.

Her mum had been brought up a Catholic but was a Jehovah’s Witness throughout most of her daughter’s early years, which meant that they didn’t celebrate birthdays or Christmas or have Easter eggs. She used to take Geri with her from door to door, much to her daughter’s embarrassment. Geri had to listen to her mother cold-calling in the hope of persuading people, in her broken English, to join the faith or that the end was near. At other times she would sit next to her mum at meetings in the local Kingdom Hall and listen to Bible stories. She was delighted when Ana Maria decided it was no longer the belief for her.

      Quite often in the school holidays Geri would have to go with her mum to the places she was cleaning because there was no one else to look after her. Even at a very young age she sensed the hardship her mum faced every day, trying to bring up her children properly. She learnt the value of money early, first by helping her sister with her paper round and then by starting her own when she was seven. She had already decided when she was six years old that fame was the best way to a better life for herself and her family. She described it in her book If Only as a ‘magical key’.

      Apparently her inspiration as a little girl was watching Margaret Thatcher at the door of 10 Downing Street on her first day as prime minister. She watched it with her dad, who was a ‘true blue Tory’. She loved him dearly, even though he contributed little to the household. He always encouraged his little girl to give everyone a song when they were at home after Sunday lunch.

      Occasionally, he would restore an old car and sell it on but he didn’t do much after a road accident left him with a bad hip when Geri was a child. He loved old movies, which he would watch on the telly, sometimes with his youngest daughter, while his long-suffering wife was at work. Geri grew up better acquainted with beautiful Hollywood greats, like Marlene Dietrich and Rita Hayworth, than with the latest chart acts. These were the stars she would pretend to be in front of the mirror with a hairbrush. Her favourite film was the romantic blockbuster Gone with the Wind starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara. Geri vowed that one day she, too, would own a splendid mansion just like the Tara plantation house.

Laurence was distinctly old-fashioned in his musical tastes, and the house in Jubilee Road was filled with the sounds of Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman. Geri observed, ‘It’s probably something to do with having an older father. I’ve always been different from my age group in liking that kind of music.’ He would often be mistaken for her grandfather when they were out and about.

      Although she was devoted to her dad, her mum remained her role model, constantly displaying a determination to get things done. She was quite strict with Geri, which led to some mother-daughter tensions while Geri was growing up. Ana Maria didn’t support her plan to sign with a child agent, for instance, telling her she needed to think more sensibly about her future and plan a solid career.

      Her parents eventually split when Geri was nine and she went to stay with her half-sister, Karen, who was Laurence’s grown-up daughter from his first marriage. After everything was sorted, she moved back to Jubilee Road while her dad settled into a grotty flat in a high-rise council block in a rougher area of the town, close to the M1. Once a week, Geri would go round to clean the place and make sure there was some milk in the fridge.

      After she and Laurence divorced, Ana Maria found a new long-term boyfriend but she was always there to support Geri, if asked. Over the years she realised that trying to rein in her headstrong daughter was a thankless task. Those who came across her, when Geri had fulfilled her dream of fame, remarked that she had no airs and graces. Her future manager, Jon Fowler, observed, ‘Her mum was absolutely terrific. She was very respectful and modest – and always smiling.’

Not all her contemporaries at the Walter de Merton Junior School in Gammon Lane warmed to Geraldine, as her mother always called her, or Jez, as she liked to call herself for a while. One classmate described her as a ‘show-off with a big mouth’. Another threatened to throw her over the railway line until a teacher intervened. Others, though, found her sociable and fun – a natural leader who would bring out the best in everyone.

      One of her close friends at the school, Sarah Gorman, recalled that they would go round to each other’s houses for tea and used to play kiss-chase with the boys in the playground.

      Despite her small stature, Geri was a demon on the netball court and used to play centre because she

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