Melanie B, who is currently starring in the Broadway production of the musical Rent, has been well received by New Yorkers, most of whom remember her as Scary Spice, and loads wanted autographs afterwards.

She’s living in New York with her mum and her daughter Phoenix. Phoenix has a slight American accent now and Mel says she doesn’t particularly want to come back to the UK. She’s considering some film scripts at the moment, and she’s also just recorded an album, as she explained “Some of it’s a bit punky, some of it’s a bit piano, acoustic-guitar driven. It’s not RnB whatsoever. I did it in my kitchen with my two friends from London – Kevin and Julie.”

“Nobody’s heard it, and I’m not signed to a record company so I wanna test it first before I decide anything and see what the reaction is and see how I like performing it, because I’ve only been there in my kitchen with a microphone singing it!”

She also told us that her acting is going well but, although she hasn’t forgotten any lines yet, she did once have a fit of giggles when her character was dying “I’d put red make up on my eyes and Jeremy, who plays my boyfriend, was really upset and playing the guitar and singing things like ‘ Your eyes’ and ‘I should have told you one thing before you died’ and ‘I love you’, but he was looking at this red eye!”

“I was smiling but I had to turn it into a kind of half-cry smile but he was just looking into it. His body clicked into this thing of ‘I’m acting but I can look at you and make you laugh cos I can handle it’ – I’m the new girl.'”