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Melanie
Full Name: Melanie R. Blatt (she’s not giving the
R away)
Date Of Birth: 25th March 1975 (25)
Weight: 108 lbs
Height: 5"3’
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Brown with blonde streaks
Distinguishing Marks: Navy Chinese-style dragon on her left rib cage.
Musical notes on her shoulder ("My mum slapped it really hard when I
showed her.") Two-foot scar on her back from her neck to her trousers.
Nickname: Small-anie, Blatt Fink, Mel-odie. "Shaznay calls me
Smell. Nic and Nat call me Bucket."
Distinguishing Marks: Navy Chinese-style dragon on her left rib cage.
Musical notes on her shoulder. Two-foot scar on her back from her neck to her
trousers.
Most Used Phrase: "No mate" and "Blatantly"
I'm the... "Organiser . .of the group. I've always got what people
need in my bag."
Saint or Sinner? "I'm pretty saintly."
Essential accessory: Sunglasses
Best thing about being in All Saints: Free trainers!
Worst thing about being in All Saints: Having to smile all the time
-She sang on a band called
Deadzone's first album and appeared on TV with them as their backing singer -
along with Denise Outen.
- Her favourite drink is milk.
- Eyelash curlers are one thing Mel can't live without.
- She used to fancy Jay Kay, of Jamiroquai. "That was so forever ago"
- Mel can touch her nose with her tongue.
"I was born in London on
25 March 1975, at University College near Euston. I lived all over London
during my life. My parents, Helen and David, moved every couple of years. They
often moved to a nicer place when they got a bit more money. May parents were
hippies so they were into The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Rory Gallagher,
Stackridge, Yes, Status Quo (when they were cool) and Cat Stevens. My dad had
the hugest record collection ever, but I got into my own style early on."
Mel may be the shortest Saint,
but she's also the loudest. You can always rely on Melanie R. Blatt to shoot
her mouth off. "I'm the cynical one of the group . . . of the world,
probably," she says. Fiery Mel's got an opinion on everything and she's
not afraid to share it. Mel thinks her dragon tattoo sums up her character.
"I'm pretty shy underneath and the dragon represents power and
fierceness."
Take, for instance, her now
famous Spice Girls quote: "We're much better looking and we've got more
upstairs." And despite sharing a name with Spice Girl - Mel B - and going
to the same school as Baby Spice ("I knew her to say hello and we spent
some lunchtimes together"), she just can't help herself.
Another band to cross Mel's
firing line was Aqua. "At least we're not thirty and singing about
Barbie," she said.
She's definitely getting
herself a reputation as the really mouthy one of the four - and not without due
case. "I'll argue with anyone," she says. "I love seeing how far
I can push people. People always look at me as if to say, 'You're a nutter.'
but I don't care, 'cos it's true! I do have my peaceful moments though."
She pauses. "No, I do!"
She wasn't crazy though. Mel
used to be a lot less confident and would cry herself to sleep when things
weren't going right. "But being in this business has made me strong and
I'm proud that I haven't cried for over a year," she says.
Mel had an unconventional
childhood by any stretch of the imagination. Her French mum and English dad
were hippies and named her after a 1960's singer. Little did they know that
Melanie would end up doing the same thing. But they did get her started on
music early - they took her to Glastonbury rock festival when she was six and
"made me stand on the roof of the car and play the violin."
"I grew up with 70s
rock," she explains. "My mum and dad went though that hippie thing -
they actually named me Melanie [late 60s 'chanteuse'] so that's sort of my heritage.
It's probably because of that I started listening to R&B!"
"Mum and dad always took
me to whatever concert I wanted to go to. I'd hear something on the radio and
I'd ask, 'Can we go?' I was very, very lucky like that. My parents encouraged
me loads."
Her parents ran their own
business designing T-shirts for heavy metal band Metallica and she spent her
early years growing up on a houseboat in London's King's Cross. Later on her
family had to live in their factory. "We didn't have anywhere to live, so
we all ended up in their T-shirt factory. I thought it was great," laughs
Mel. Her parents also had an astrological chart done for their daughter which
said she'd be successful and sorted by the time she was twenty-five. It looks
like being pretty much on the ball.
"I went to Fitzjohn's
Primary School in Hampstead and there was a really good head teacher called
David Joyner," she remembers. "The best thing was that they taught
music there and the staff were lovely. My favourite subjects were art and singing
- I was never pushed towards mathematics really, it never grabbed me (Bohemian
parents, you see). I can remember I played the violin and piano, but do I
remember anything now? No! I got up to Grade Two piano, actually, and passed
Grade One violin. After that I just left it alone. I think that the only reason
I played the violin was probably that some guy in my class was going to play
the violin so I thought I'd get in there and play as well."
"I had no bad subjects at
school. I was okay at everything – except sport. I’m terrible at sport; I just
can’t do it. Doing cross-country running I used to wear these two-tone
winklepickers, with leggings and my mum’s big orange jumper. I’d always come
last in the races and I wouldn’t mind at all. I’ve got no sense of competition
where that’s concerned. Yep, sport was definitely my worst subject."
"At school I was known as
the showbiz one. When it came to sending me to secondary school the headmaster
called up my parents and said, 'There's no point in sending her to normal
school, she's not normal. Why don't you try stage school?'"
So, Mel went to stage school
aged eleven and was a star pupil. She recorded a toothpaste ad with Emma Spice
("You can’t see me," she grins) and in a spaghetti ad ("which I
know will come back and haunt me’) and acted in the West End musical Les Misérables.
"The one thing I did that I loved was in Les Misérables. I
was understudy for Corsette and I played Ebony for six months. That was very
coo. I had a great time – I was nervous for the first couple of weeks but I
soon got into it. I loved singing, that was my favourite, but I wasn’t given
solos because certain girls were favorites and stuff. I never had any of the
glory at school. You had to be perfect. It was lack of confidence I suffered from
from then on."
"Emma (Baby Spice) and I
went to the Sylvia Young Theatre School, and she looked exactly the same as she
does now. We weren’t best mates or anything, but I knew her to say hello and we
spent some lunchtimes together."
But Melanie had a soul mate at
school, enter Nicole Appleton! Within a week of joining stage school the pair
were inseparable. "Nic and I were together, from, like, year dot,"
Mel laughs. "We were partners in crime. We can’t remember how we met or
how it started, but it was an instant bonding and the year we spent together
seems like ten years. I dunno. She always makes me laugh. It’s the humor, I
think, that brought us together. She used to make me wet myself laughing. Still
does (usually when I’m not supposed to be, like at a photo shoot!) We were
mates like ‘that’. We just couldn’t get into the school though."
But disaster stuck when she
was aged thirteen. "It wasn’t good. Here's what happened. Somewhere along
the line someone noticed that I had a weird bend in my back, so my mum took me
to the doctors. They had a look at it, did all their tests and stuff, and then
they said, 'You've got this thing called scoliosis.'
"My mum was like, 'Well,
what can we do with it?' and the NHS told us that I could have an operation
which had a fifty per cent chance of leaving me paralysed from the neck down.
My mother, who's French, said, 'Right, that's it. We're out of this country and
we moved to France 'cause mum reckoned she could get me better treatment there.
And she was right."
Living in France was a culture
shock for Mel. "I'd lived in London all my life and suddenly I found
myself in a small village full of old men and I couldn't speak a word of
French."
"It was great," she
deadpans. "It was like, in England I'd been a nerd at primary school, and
then I got to French school and I was a freak because I wasn't French. The kids
there were so different. Everybody there wanted to be a doctor or a vet or
something, and I'd just come from this stage school where everyone wanted to be
a star.
"We saw a couple of
specialists in France and there was one that was perfect so we went ahead with
the op. They put three metal rods in my back to keep it straight - it wasn't
painful actually. I was just glad I was getting fixed.
"So I have these metal
rods in my back now, which clip my back together," she explains. "So
when I go through customs at airports I usually set off the metal detectors.
I'm like, is it my jewellery, is it my watch? And then I remember." L
At least her back was cured.
"It means I can't do the crab, that's all," she says, bravely.
"Dealing with is has made me stronger."
"I did a bit of acting in
France to make a bit of cash - just a couple of things, nothing special (no,
I'm not going to say!) but there was nothing for me in France, musically. I
wanted to do music, I don't really like the acting thing, so I thought, 'Right,
back to England.'
"It was just one of those
things," she grins. "I came to England to stay with a friend and
within a month I was singing in a band. I was soooo lucky."
She didn't think it was so
peachy at the time though, her boyfriend was supposed to be following her to
England. Did he come? Did he heck . . .
"He was a cretin!"
she laughs. "I went back to France about, oh, three months later and there
he was going out with some other girl called Melanie! And he was only fifteen!
Can you believe that?"
Mel took her mind off things
by doing a variety of jobs to makes ends meet. She was a nanny, a window
dresser and a shop assistant in trendy store Kookaï, although that lasted just
three hours! She started at ten a.m. and walked out at one p.m. Luckily for us,
Mel stuck at her musical career a little longer.
Within months Melanie joined a
band called Drive who were signed to the One Little Indian label
("we released one single and it did nothing") The Melanie met a DJ
called Jay Strongman who formed a group with Mel, his girlfriend and a drummer.
"It was a bit of a weird
time but it was also very exiting," she remembers. "I lived with them
for a bit then I got involved in Deadzone, which was cool. [Mel actually
appeared in Deadzone’s first albumin 1995, appearing on TV with them as backing
singer alongside Denise Van Outen.]
"I didn’t know anyone
when I started out but then you meet someone and that’s it! I was hanging
around in the Metamorphosis studio when I finally met Shaznay about two years
later. And that’s how all this began."
"We’ve been through so
much shit that we should have quit ages ago. The lowest point was the middle of
last year when we thought we’d got ourselves sorted, just to be told ‘We want
you to be like the Spice Girls.’ We had to go into hiding for a bit and that
was hard. I couldn’t believe it when the first single charted so well, and
we’re still here!"
The All Saint with the biggest
lips is actually a bit of a slob. She hates exercise and says that if she could
be an animal she would be a tortoise because they could just laze around all
day. She chills by chatting with friends or watching romantic movies like Gone
with the Wind. On TV she loves Eastenders ("It reminds me of my
childhood"), Friends, The Simpsons and Shooting Stars. One
of the best presents she has ever had was when Nic took her to see Ready,
Steady, Cook being filmed. "Yeah, ‘cause I love cooking!" she
laughs. "Ready Steady Cook is my favourite program ever. Nic took
me to watch it being filmed once and it was just brilliant . . . although I
can’t remember what they cooked." But what can SHE cook? "I can cook
anything," she says. "That's the French side of me. I make a mean
cheese fondue. Unfortunately it doesn't agree with Shaz's stomach - but she
liked it before she vomited!"
Mel loves food so much she'll
eat anything and pigs out on peanut-butter sandwiches, spaghetti, McDonalds and
"anything with butter, cream and cheese or just fat." It's a wonder
how she manages to stay so gorgeous. Maybe all that partying keeps her fit.
Once Mel got into trouble when
she threw a bash at her parents' house while they were away. "My parents
went to Rotterdam for the weekend, left me in charge, and I had a huge party. I
spent all day cleaning up, made sure the house looked brand spanking new,"
Mel explains. "My mum returned looking angry saying there was vomit on the
doorstep - I hadn't thought to look outside. Rumbled!" Perhaps she'd been
cooking cheese fondue again! J
She also got into hot water
with her mum when she had her first tattoo done - the musical notes. She says
her mum slapped it! Mel's not too pleased with it herself now "because
there's only five staves on a music score, and he's put in six." For one
of the most famous singers in the world, it's a tad embarrassing.
"When I didn’t have any
money, the cheapest thing that’s get me drunk was white wine and blackcurrant
liqueur. After three of them, I’m giggling and singing. But I don’t drink a lot
these days – I’m too scared of throwing up."
"I am the least trusting
one in the band, " she says seriously. "I think I’ve been burned
badly in the past, y’know, with people that you think are there to help you and
then you find out that they’re not all that. So, yeah, I suppose I am kind of
tough really. If anyone thinks I’m a girl and I don’t know anything then
they’re really looking for a fight."
Mel describes herself as
"calm, jokey and very generous," and her ambition is to be happy. One
of her most memorable moments was watching her younger sister being born and
Mel was given the honor of choosing a name for her - Jasmine. These days they
get on really well and she even shares a bedroom with the ten-year-old in their
parent's house in Landbroke Grove, London, where the walls are covered with
posters of Hanson and Barbie.
Considering her lovely
deep-brown eyes and to-die-for looks, it comes as a bit of a shock that until
recently, Mel didn't have much luck with boys. "I'm not very good at
flirting. Nicky has to give me some lessons," says Mel. "I don't
notice when men are coming on to me."
Only once did Mel do the hard
part and chat up a guy at a party - but when it came to the exchanging
telephone numbers bit, she got so embarrassed that she avoided him for the rest
of the night!
Mel likes well-dressed blokes
who make her laugh and can teach her things. Her perfect place for a date is a
restaurant, gassing over a candle lit dinner, but unlike Shaz she doesn't like
her men to be too caring - she wants someone with so much going on in her life
that they don't have time to follow her around. Anyone totally the opposite of
Dean Gaffney (Robbie) from EastEnders, basically.
But for a long while, Mel
wasn't having much luck finding her dream guy, mainly because she was spending
so much time with her nose to the grindstone. "The music's been taking up
most of our time," she said. There were stories about her dating Brad
Pitt, and she had admitted that she fancied him in the past, but Mel insists
they were just friends. Things go so bad that when she saw Jamiroquai's Jay Kay
in the street she jumped on him. "I said, 'I love you.' And he said,
‘Well, we'll be getting married next then,'" she says excitedly.
As fate would have it, Mel
ended up with Jamiroquai's bass played instead, Stuart Zender, who she met in
January 1997. The fell head over heels in love and Stuart, who's the same age
as Mel, bought her a £20.00 engagement ring two months later. "I love him
and every day he does cool things," says the sultry Saint.
"Mel and I are perfect
for each other," adds millionaire Stuart. "I have no worries for the
future. Rumours of us splitting up or leaving our groups are wrong." But,
Stuart did eventually leave Jamiroquai, after Mel announced her pregnancy, to
look after Mel and Lilly Ella.
Yes, if Mel's got anything to
do with it, All Saints are going to be around for a very long time. "The
music is very important to us," says Mel. "We put out heart and soul
into it and really love what we do," She does have something to fall back
on, though, just in case. "If it doesn't work out, I'll go back to playing
the violin at Glastonbury," Mel jokes.
‘If you travel don’t the road
to excess you have to go through a lot of poo, lots of bad times, and some of
the lowest times in your life. I believe that you learn a lot from that. Then
again, if your excess doesn’t teach you anything, then no, it doesn’t lead to
wisdom."
STAR QUALITIES
Aries born in the Chinese year
of the Rabbit are refined can cultured, and adore beauty. Mel's love of cooking
reflects her desire to create a masterpiece and whatever she makes, it will
always be well presented. Aries Rabbits are highly curious and want to get as
much out of life as possible. They love to learn and will work their fingers to
bone to achieve their goal, but they don't worry about recognition from others.
Good careers would be as a museum curator or restaurant critic. Aries Rabbits
love comfort and home security and are sensible and careful. Although they will
play up from time to time, and all their common sense goes out the window when
they go shopping. They are extremely caring but at the same time distant and
cool. They are charming and sensitive but prefer to be independent in relationships
and don't like partners who are too clingy. They dream of romance and knights
in shining armour and are constantly falling in love, but tend to run out at
the first sign of trouble. Best love matches are Leo, Sagittarius, Gemini and
Aquarius.
