You have to feel sorry for Geri. First, she changed her name from Halliwell to Horner when she married Christian back in 2015. Then she missed out on a honeymoon due to her new husband’s job as the boss at Formula 1 racing team Red Bull.
And last year, she had to play the Stepford Wife, putting on a united front when Christian was accused (and later cleared) of sending inappropriate texts to a female subordinate.
After those sordid messages were leaked, she appeared at the launch of the F1 season in Bahrain beside her brazen husband, who held her hand proprietarily.
She was in vintage Gucci, her free hand clinging for dear life to an Hermes bag as if to say: ‘I am worth it, really I am. I no longer dress in Next. He’s still mine.’ Naturally, the pictures went viral.
Her high-powered husband has secured an £80million payoff after months of wrangling with his team’s owners and is now effectively on gardening leave given that he won’t be able to return to the paddock at the head of a rival team for months.
After those sordid messages were leaked, Geri appeared at the launch of the F1 season in Bahrain beside her brazen husband, who held her hand proprietarily
Thing is, nobody wants their husband at home, twiddling his thumbs, for that long. Christian is a workaholic, an adrenaline junkie ever since his childhood when he first developed a love of racing on the go-kart track.
And now? To pile insult upon injury, news emerges he is taking his former Spice Girl wife on a late honeymoon road trip around… Scotland.
Geri, I am sure, would have preferred St Bart’s, where she could unwrap that perfectly honed bikini body and perform yoga on the beach. Even the Amalfi coast would have been preferable.
In Scotland, there’s no guarantee that she will be able to admire the scenery, as her husband will doubtless be driving at speed: it will be one long, grey blur.
There is nothing worse than being trapped in a car with a man for hours and days on end. He will be swearing at the couple trundling along in front, while she is tries to make small talk: ‘Red Bull. It never had quite the same ring as Ferrari, did it?’
Christian plans to take his wife to the Isle of Skye. Geri may inhabit a country pile – she even owns horses – but that still doesn’t make her the Princess of Wales, content to trudge the moors in all weathers wearing a stiff Barbour.
I met and interviewed Geri several times in her past life as a pop star and I know she is riddled with insecurities. On the one one hand, she will be feeling relieved her husband is no longer travelling to the world’s most glamorous locations, where beautiful women descend on wealthy men like wasps on a jam pot. But also, she will surely be thinking: ‘Am I enough. Will he be bored? Should we take Monty [their son, now eight], along as ballast?’
To pile insult upon injury, news emerges he is taking his former Spice Girl wife on a late honeymoon road trip around… Scotland
Geri lost one family, when she left the Spice Girls. She will not want to lose another
Despite her success with the Spice Girls, Geri never felt beautiful or talented enough. Yes, she fashioned a tea towel into a mini dress, even goosed Prince Charles, but it was all bravura: underneath, she is still the daughter of a cleaner, the wannabe who worked in Next, dreaming of designer clothes.
In 2001, I worked with her on a cover shoot in Los Angeles for a glossy magazine. She faxed in advance a list of the only things she would consume: brown rice, steamed vegetables, zero-fat milk. When she stripped down to her G-string in the dressing room, she revealed the body of a child and no longer fit any of the designer clothes: we ended up shooting her wearing her own jeans and teeny vest top. Never mind the fame and the self-made riches, the fact she punished her body so severely – she previously battled with bulimia and would go on to become obsessive about Ashtanga yoga – revealed inner torment.
During the texting scandal, of course she outwardly supported her husband – but she would have been asking herself: am I too old, now I’m in my fifties? Does he really love me? He has left his family once before – Christian left his wife and baby for Geri. Once a cheater, always a cheater?
So, this road trip will feel less like a relaxing mini break, more like a test. Sitting alongside a man whose brain is used to dealing in hundredths of a second, she will be feeling unsettled, perhaps judged, clinging to the seat as well as her man.
I remember visiting her at her lovely north London mansion in 2010. She was revelling in being a mum – Bluebell, her daughter with screenwriter Sacha Gervasi, was playing on the Astroturf – and for the first time seemed happy in her own skin. She had designed a range of swimwear and was chatting easily about getting older. That took courage, to shake off her insecurities and stop punishing herself.
But this newfound confidence will have been knocked by the accusations against her husband, and by this sudden change in the family routine. She told me that more than money and good looks, she craves only loyalty and kindness in a man.
Geri lost one family, when she left the Spice Girls. She will not want to lose another. She is now, literally, a passenger in her high-achieving, impatient husband’s life.
