A quarter of a century ago, Geri Halliwell, the Spice Girl formerly known as Ginger Spice, released her first solo single. Entitled “Look at Me,” the song described Halliwell’s compulsive desire for attention, citing her tendency for being something of a drama queen. But hindsight is a terrible thing. Halliwell currently has all the attention in the world, but only because her husband has been accused of sexting an employee (who for legal reasons cannot be identified).
For weeks now, the British press has been giddily splashing around in one of the most perfect stories it could ever imagine. The career of Formula One boss Christian Horner has been left teetering on the brink after he was accused of controlling behavior by an unnamed underling. (He denied the allegations of inappropriate conduct.) The story has unfolded with more twists and turns than the Circuit Zandvoort, but central to the whole tawdry narrative has been the fact that Horner happens to be married to one of the Spice Girls.
A quick recap for those not up to speed. Since 2005, Horner has managed Red Bull Racing, a team named after the popular energy drink. It’s a role that gave him everything: wealth, power, status, fame (courtesy of the bafflingly popular Netflix reality show Formula 1: Drive to Survive), and, thanks to Halliwell, a pop-star wife.
The marriage seemed to bring about a total and immediate change in Halliwell’s identity. Where once she was a gobby young firebrand, whose limitless ambition seemed to easily overcome any shortfalls in musical proficiency, her nuptials instantly transformed her into Geri Horner: Country Wife. Her Instagram slowly filled with images of her in waxed jackets and Hunter Wellies. She baked. She gleefully cocked shotguns. As one wag at the time remarked, it turned out that Halliwell had been the real Posh Spice all along.
And all was rosy, at least until last month, when Horner was put under investigation by Red Bull, following reports of some vaguely defined inappropriate behavior with a member of his staff. Some believed that the investigation represented Formula One’s #MeToo moment, the point at which the sexual impropriety of a powerful man would bring about an industry-wide sea change. But all this tension came to nothing, since the Red Bull top brass cleared Horner of any wrongdoing.
In any case, it could have come to nothing, were it not for the tranche of private WhatsApp messages allegedly between Horner and the employee that were anonymously e-mailed to hundreds of journalists around the world straight after Red Bull’s decision was announced. Ostensibly representing a smoking gun—although it is prudent to point out that they are not comprehensive or verified and may have been cherry-picked to flatter the accuser—the spoils consisted of screengrab after screengrab of Horner apparently attempting to pester one of his employees into sex.
If the messages were released solely to make people’s genitals shrivel up and die of embarrassment for Horner, then consider them a direct hit. “I really wanted you today,” he allegedly says at one point, to little response. He appears to suggest that he masturbated in an airplane bathroom, a confession that is met with the text equivalent of an eye roll. “Still waiting for a distracting pic,” he pleads later, before receiving the agonizing response “Nope.” Perhaps most painfully of all, he consistently mixes up “your” and “you’re” in conversation. It is, in short, the least sexy exchange ever recorded.
If the messages were released solely to make people’s genitals shrivel up and die of embarrassment for Horner, then consider them a direct hit.
The question is: Who exactly leaked the messages? While nobody has come forward, there have been a number of reports of a feud between Horner and former Formula One driver Jos Verstappen (the father of current Red Bull driver Max). Not only has Jos Verstappen claimed that Red Bull will “explode” unless the matter is definitively dealt with, but the pair were photographed having an animated discussion at the recent Bahrain Grand Prix. And then, on Tuesday, it was suggested that Verstappen had been spending a lot of time with Horner’s unnamed accuser around the time. However, nothing has been proved, and this all remains the sort of rampant speculation that could fuel a full month of daytime TV storylines.
The bigger question, though, is: What about Geri? The press has spent the past month lavishing on her the sort of merciless attention that hasn’t been seen since Princess Diana was alive. Reporters have been frantically checking her Instagram and breathlessly announcing whenever she unfollows anyone (as she recently did with Mac Verstappen and, troublingly, all the Beckhams—reportedly feeling a lack of public support from her former bandmate et al.).
Friends of Halliwell have also told newspapers that they are worried about her, since she is currently having “the meltdown to end all meltdowns” over the leaks. Obviously, the sensible advice to Halliwell at this point might be to get better friends, the kind who aren’t intent on broadcasting a live feed of your mental state to the tabloids, but you can’t win ’em all.
So far, Halliwell seems to remain firmly on Team Horner, putting on a very deliberate show of unity with her husband in Bahrain that climaxed with a public kiss, albeit one through gritted teeth. But this is unlikely to be the end of it. A trade magazine, BusinessF1, has already wandered into legally tenuous waters by not only naming Horner’s accuser but literally putting her on the cover of its most recent issue. Realistically, it only seems like a matter of time before her life is invaded, too. On Thursday it was revealed that she had been suspended by Red Bull, so now there are questions to be asked of a sport that punishes anyone for making an H.R. complaint. It also isn’t unrealistic to expect that more messages will be leaked. Whatever happens, though, you can guarantee that we’ll all be looking at Halliwell again.
Stuart Heritage is a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL. He is the author of Bald: How I Slowly Learned to Not Hate Having No Hair (And You Can Too)