Mel B was bombarded with racist hate mail after buying mansion: “It disturbed me”

Mel B has revealed how she was sent racist hate mail after buying a mansion in 1998 at the height of her Spice Girls fame.

The singer bought a mansion in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, but faced hostilities from a series of residents in the village.

She told The Sun: “The fact I bought it disturbed the whole village. I got not just hate mail but racist hate mail, which was shocking to me. It said, ‘Get out of this village, you don’t belong, you can’t buy something like this . . .’”

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Mel added: “It disturbed me but I still threw some great parties there – really loud to disturb the village.”

Spice Girls Brit Awards 1998
Spice Girls at the 1998 Brit Awards. Credit: JMEnternational/Redferns/Getty

At the time, it was said that “more than a dozen” letters were sent to the singer, but one resident told the Bucks Free Press in 2000 they were stunned to hear about the hostilities.

One said: “We are very surprised and shocked that something like this can come into our village. Certainly, this issue has never come into our lives and this is the first time we have heard of these kind of problems in Little Marlow.”

In a separate interview with The Daily Star, she recently revealed how she experienced prejudice in the Spice Girls after a stylist told her they wanted to straighten her hair.

 

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She point blank refused, explaining: “My hair was my identity and yes it was different to all the other girls, but that was what the Spice Girls were about – celebrating our differences.”

Mel added: “There were times when there was obvious racism, I was asked to leave a designer clothes shop in Sun City when I was with all the other girls… It’s pretty awful to think I wasn’t actually shocked because if you are brown, then there’s always a part of you that expects some confrontation.”

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