Could Geri’s lady of the manor life with the king of Formula 1 spin off the track?
The wifi password at the former Spice Girl’s lavish country home is ‘Wonderful Husband’. But as Christian Horner faces an accusation of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ from a female colleague...
VISITORS to Geri Halliwell-Horner’s house can be in no doubt of the fervour of her admiration for husband Christian, the boss of Red Bull’s Formula 1 team. Scatter cushions are adorned with phrases such as: ‘Mr & Mrs Horner, est 2015’, and strikingly, the password for the wifi is: ‘Wonderful Husband.’
She says their marriage has brought her the peace and purpose she has sought all her life. Indeed, the home she has built with Horner and their seven-year-old son Monty appears a perfect, aspirational, country idyll.
Of all the Spice Girls, hers has been perhaps the most radical transformation. The Geri of old was a flame-haired sex-bomb known for pinching bottoms at stuffy events and spilling out of tiny sparkly outfits. Now, at 51, she asks to be taken seriously as a country mum with literary ambitions. And, by and large, she is.
‘I gave my life 100 per cent to music, and then when I got to my 30s . . . the teenage bravado had run out. I wasn’t sure where I belonged, and I found it a really difficult time,’ she has mused.
At 41, she seemed to get over that identity crisis and started her romance with Christian. At 42, she married him. ‘I was a late developer. I’m incredibly grateful to be in a really loving relationship.’
And hitherto, Geri has nailed her new persona.
She dresses almost exclusively in a rich mum uniform of white, cream and ecru — cashmere, puffer jackets, designer frocks — and loves horses and baking. She goes solely and pointedly by the name Halliwell-Horner.
Last month, she was photographed for Perfect magazine by the one and only David Bailey, and among the friends congratulating her on the coup was Carole Bamford — actually Baroness Bamford — who founded the Daylesford Organic empire and is the leading hostess of the smart Cotswolds set.
This is exactly the milieu — upper- class rural, but with fashionable London connections — in which Geri sees herself thriving.
I’m told that — until the scandal engulfing her husband detonated this week — she even believed she was on track to gain a gong to match her husband’s CBE.
After all, former bandmate Mel B got an MBE in 2022 for her work with victims of domestic abuse, and Geri — I’m led to believe — has been actively courting both King Charles and Camilla via various charity projects focusing on literacy.
With an honour of her own, her road to unimpeachable respectability would have been complete, her humble roots on a council estate in Watford, the daughter of a cleaning woman, long forgotten.
But what now? On Monday, news broke that Christian Horner was the subject of a formal investigation over claims of ‘ inappropriate behaviour’ towards a female colleague at Red Bull Racing, where he heads the highly successful F1 team.
THE female staffer, who is not being named, is understood to have complained about Horner to the team’s parent company at Red Bull in Austria, which yesterday issued a statement: ‘ After being made aware of certain recent allegations, the company launched an independent investigation. This process, which is already under way, is being carried out by an external specialist barrister.
‘ The company takes these matters extremely seriously and the investigation will be completed as soon as practically possible. It would not be appropriate to comment further at this time.’
For his part, Horner says: ‘I completely deny these claims,’ and he is due to speak to their barrister on Friday. Some sources believe the allegations are being aired because of a power struggle at Red Bull.
Since it launched with Horner as principal in 2005, the team has won six constructors’ titles and seven drivers titles and has dominated F1 over the past two seasons, both of which were won by its top driver Max Verstappen.
Horner is currently the sport’s longest-serving principal and also one of its most recognisable thanks to his starring role in the hit Netflix series Drive To Survive — and his marriage to Geri.
In the face of this crisis, Geri is standing fully behind him.
SHE has been very upset by the backlash and at one point on Monday night turned off all the comments on her Instagram to stem the flow of negativity towards that ‘ wonderful husband’, with fans suggesting she should leave him and some adding they hoped she had a prenuptial agreement in place. He’s worth an estimated £40 million.
The comments have since been switched back on . . . and criticism continues to flood in.
Friends of Geri say she is an emotional person, something which she often attributes to her Spanish mother Ana Maria, and this has apparently hit her hard.
‘Geri is in full lockdown and not talking to anyone at the moment,’ says one. ‘ Christian is speaking privately and says that he will clear his name and come through this, but Geri seems to be simply too upset to engage with anyone. Just lots of tears.
‘She will stand by him and be at his side just as much as she always has been. She never misses a race and that will not change.’
Indeed, it seems she will be taking a leaf out of former bandmate Victoria’s playbook who, at the height of the scandal around her husband David Beckham’s alleged relationship with his PA Rebecca Loos in 2004, put on a series of conspicuous displays of marital unity, both at an event for then manager Simon Fuller in London and also on the ski slopes in Courchevel, France, when the story first broke.
A source says: ‘ Geri is one of those people who goes into everything with both size-three feet. She was famously a limpet when she was with Robbie Williams, and he found it hard to handle.
‘It’s the same with Christian. She is committed to him with every fibre of her being.
‘People have been remarking that she sticks to him like glue and that recently she follows him from room to room.’ The source adds: ‘There are quite a lot of people who aren’t that fond of Christian.
‘They think he is rather snobby and talks an awful lot about money, but as far as she is concerned the guy walks on water. The problem for Geri is that she has been all in with this super-perfect, super-posh life and now a Grand Canyon-sized crack has appeared in it. It has gone from looking like Downton Abbey to resembling an episode of Jeremy Kyle in the blink of an eye.’
As harsh as that may sound, the beginnings of the romance had an element of daytime TV chat show to it, too.
It was in March 2014 that former racing driver Horner split up from long-term partner Beverley Allen, six months after the birth of their daughter. He started dating Geri, but that summer Horner’s father Garry and his mother Sara were seen at Wimbledon with Beverley, in a clear show of solidarity with her.
Beverley and Christian had been an item for 14 years and they lived together in Northamptonshire along with her two children from a previous relationship. They had seemed happily settled, especially with a new baby.
In November, just eight months after the split with Beverley, Geri and Christian announced — in The Times, of course — that they were to make it official. ‘ Mr C. E. J. Horner OBE and Geri Halliwell. The engagement is announced between Christian, son of Mr and Mrs G.M. Horner, and Geraldine, daughter of the late Mr L.F. Halliwell and Mrs A Parkinson’ it ran.
Reports suggested that Horner’s parents might boycott the wedding
as they were still so upset about the new romance.
A source said at the time: ‘They’re very upset by everything that has gone on and feel as though their loyalties are very divided.’ In a recent interview, however, Horner said that relations all round were now ‘totally harmonious’ between his former partner and current wife, and indeed the whole family.
Clearly any hurt has long since passed. Geri came to the relationship having had a series of disasters and disappointments, most notably perhaps with British screenwriter Sacha Gervasi, the father of her daughter Bluebell. Their romance was over before the baby was born and it’s said the first time he laid eyes on her was via the pages of Hello! Magazine. She is now 17.
Bluebell’s parentage is one of a number of topics which are off limits to interviewers, which perhaps says a lot about the vigour with which Geri has reinvented herself — and scrubbed out the past.
Geri, whose fun-loving persona and iconic appearance, including her famous Union Jack mini dress worn to the Brit Awards in 1997, seemed to drive so much of the ‘Girl Power’ juggernaut, left the Spice Girls in 1998, in the middle of a world tour. Away from the spotlight, she was struggling with the eating disorder bulimia. Her one-time boyfriend Robbie Williams urged her to seek help, which she did at a clinic in Arizona. Professionally, she then focused on launching her solo career, indicating her rebirth by emerging from a giant vagina at the Brits in 2000.
Geri began to reinvent herself with the help of George Michael, a good friend whom she’d once thought she would marry (‘my gaydar was completely off’).
‘He scooped me up, I was a little bit of a lost kitten and he tried to turn me into Grace Kelly. He took me to fancy shops and bought me Armani suits. He helped streamline my hair and tone me down. He really supported me at a time in my life when I was lost.’
By the time she married Horner, in 2015, all of that was behind her, and she was ready for the biggest transformation yet.
Wearing a fully white Phillipa Lepley lace dress, she exchanged vows with Christian at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, with guests including Amanda Holden, Myleene Klass and former bandmate Emma Bunton.
Since then Geri has concentrated mostly on writing children’s books and has hopes that her most recent, Rosie Frost And The Falcon Queen, will become a mega-selling series, which then gets turned into a TV show.
Her donkeys, horses, goats and boating on the duck pond at the family home near Banbury, Oxfordshire, keep her occupied, too.
And if Christian has brought the excitement of F1 to the marriage, she comes with celebrity connections every bit as glamorous. In 2022, the couple arrived at the Glastonbury festival by helicopter to watch Paul McCartney’s set.
At Christian’s 50th birthday party in december, a roster of highprofile guests attended from the pop world: Rod Stewart, Gary Barlow and Ronnie Wood.
The fact that Christian is away from home so often as the Red Bull team moves from Grand Prix to Grand Prix through the F1 season has so far apparently caused no problems within the marriage.
‘The great thing about Geri is that because of the industry she grew up in, and the touring and the demands and so on, she gets it,’ Christian has said.
‘She knows that travel’s tough and sometimes lonely and what the demands of my job are.
‘She’s tremendously supportive in that respect. She never demands more time than I can give and she’s incredibly understanding. I think, like in any marriage, there has to be a balance and just somebody to bounce stuff off.’
A friend says: ‘It’s a lovely world for Geri with Christian — there is plenty of money in it and lots of luxury. She did really well out of the Spice Girls, they all did, but they all did lots of spending and she wouldn’t be travelling by private jet and helicopter if it wasn’t for him.
‘Christian loves all the celebrity sparkle that she brings, the fact that she will rope in dame Judi dench or TV presenter Rylan for a dinner. She brings a pop- star panache, even though she only wants to be an author these days, and in fact does everything she can to avoid being a pop star.
‘She has scrubbed all those previous personas out and has given herself heart and soul to Christian’s world.’
Whether that 100 per cent commitment may now falter, only time — and Red Bull’s investigation — will tell.
Geri must hope that her husband is fully in the clear by the start of the 2024 F1 season next month and that the enviable life she has built for herself — among both the country and the jet- set — can continue at full throttle.