I really, really wanted to write it (not zig-a-zig, ah): Jennifer Saunders 'was the sixth Spice Girl'
The Absolutely Fabulous comedian has written a musical using the Spice Girls' biggest hits
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Your support makes all the difference.Call her Comedy Spice? Jennifer Saunders has claimed she is the sixth Spice Girl after penning the nineties girl band’s new musical Viva Forever!
The French and Saunders star says she spent so much time with Sporty, Baby, Ginger, Posh and Baby at the height of their fame that she was like a silent partner in their career. She got to know the band after she and fellow comedians Dawn French and Kathy Burke (aka the Sugar Lumps) performed “Who Do You Think They Are” with the Spice Girls for comic relief 1997.
“I was basically the sixth member of the band,” she told The Mirror. “We used to travel around everywhere to see them and they were so great with my kids.”
When the Absolutely Fabulous writer heard that a Spice Girls musical was in the pipeline she says she knew she was the woman to pen it. “My first thought was I really, really had to do it,” she told press at the Piccadily Theatre in London where the musical had its premiere last night.
“The thought of a Spice Girls musical written by somebody else was not acceptable. Because I was so close to them I couldn’t let it slip through my fingers,” she said.
“The [Spice Girls] were fun, naughty and bad but in a fun way. I knew the musical had to have that running through its veins. It needed to be about fame and take in their stories and be a lot of fun.”
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