She was almost a Spice Girl, but got dropped for Victoria

The Spice Girls are undoubtedly one of the biggest British pop sensations of all time. As the girls celebrate their 20th anniversary, one woman has lived for the last two decades knowing how different her life could have been.

Mel Coloma has been a singer since she was a child, and after responding to a magazine advertisement, she was selected to be in a new girl band back in 1994.

The group were called ‘Touch’, and she was placed alongside four other girls, only to be later dropped from the group for being “too good”!

Speaking recently, Mel explained “They took me into a room and told me my voice was too strong for the kind of group they wanted to put together. They said I should think about a solo career. I didn’t get upset because I’d been to lots of auditions and rejection was part and parcel of it.”

The record company replaced her with Victoria Adams (Beckham), and Touch were renamed ‘The Spice Girls’.

The Spice Girls | © PA Images

Mel described the first time she saw the ‘Wannabe’ video, and the realisation hit her "My first thought was that the video was bizarre. Then Mel B’s face flashed up on the screen and everything fell into place. This was the group I’d so nearly been a part of. I’d assumed it hadn’t come to anything because it had been two years and I’d never heard anything about Touch. But here they were.”

Today, Mel performs part-time in a band, but her main job is working for the NHS. She realises how different her life could have been if Victoria wasn’t chosen instead of her, “In a different life I could have been married to a footballer, dressed in designer clothes and jetted all over the world. I had no idea then how close I’d come to being in the biggest girl group of all time.

“I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times I wished I could have traded places with Victoria. As a singer, it did make me laugh when she said they sometimes turned her mic off.”

Two decades on, Mel is singing with a group called The Decanters, and is supporting X Factor’s Sam Bailey on cruise boats. You can hear her strong vocals, which cost her a place in The Spice Girls, in the video below:

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• The Spice Girls