Former Spice Girl Mel B shared that she was tempted to tell her fellow bandmates that she was joining The Masked Singer.
The 45-year-old was the second celebrity eliminated from The Masked Singer on Saturday night’s episode when she was unmasked as Seahorse. Mel did not tell anyone that she was participating in the competition but when she was asked if she was tempted to tell her bandmates, she replied: ‘Well, yeah!’
‘I didn’t tell any of them. I didn’t tell anybody, not even my mum and my mum’s a big gossip so I definitely wouldn’t have told her.’
During a talk with host Will Njobvu on The Masked Singer’s spin-off show Unmasked, Mel said that she found singing in costume ‘nerve-wracking’ and that she tried hard to disguise her Leeds accent.
She said: ‘It’s a bit nerve wracking because with this mask on you can’t see and it’s very constricted – so it’s literally like singing with someone’s hand in your face so that bit was a bit daunting but when the music starts you just get into it.
‘I thought I did quite a good job not sounding so northern. To be quite girly and soft with no accent was hard work actually.’
Despite Mel trying to hide her true identity, judges Davina McCall, Rita Ora and Mo Giligan all correctly guessed that Mel was the star behind Seahorse.
Asked what she learned from the show, Mel said: ‘What I’ve taken away is – apparently I have a distinctive walk and a distinctive voice and I’m never going to get away with it.’
Asked if she will miss her costume, the singer joked: ‘No, because I’m stealing everything. I’m taking everything with me!’   Â
While the three other judges correctly identified Mel, fourth judge Jonathan Ross was sure that it was not Mel as he had ‘heard Mel singing up close’ before and he guessed that it could be chat show host Trisha Goddard. When she was revealed, the singer then tried to disguise herself by changing her voice and the way she sang. Mel B performed Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head on the show and tried to throw the judges off the scent by singing differently than she normally would.
After being unmasked, Mel said: ‘I thought I disguised myself pretty well with my voice and accent and trying not to be like me. I’m very shocked that you guessed me.’
To which Mo, who had insisted he would put money on it being Mel from the start, replied: ‘You just have such a distinctive twang. The way that you speak.’
Davina revealed it was Mel’s pronunciation of ‘show’ which gave it away. Whilst Rita added: ‘Sometimes when you’re too iconic, you’re too iconic.’
A clue that was given in order to guess that it was Mel behind the mask was that the Seahorse had stolen a toilet roll from a legend’s home.
Explaining what had actually happened, Mel said: ‘Well we went to Nelson Mandela’s house, we all got invited and our hair and make up team actually said to bring something with you.
‘So I took a toilet roll and kept some for myself so we all had a token [from the day].’
Asked by host Joel Dommett what the other Spice Girls would think of her appearance on the show, Mel said: ‘They’ll probably be annoyed I didn’t tell them!’
This episode comes after Sophie Ellis-Bextor was unmasked as the Alien on the premiere episode of The Masked Singer on Boxing Day. The Murder On The Dancefloor hitmaker admitted she was fortunate she did not stumble in her costume.
After the show, she said: ‘I was on a platform and couldn’t see too well. I thought I might fall off.’
On having an advantage as a singer, she continued: ‘I felt like a gymnast who had a cool routine with jumps and twists, who then left after their first comedy somersault. But it’s cool.’