PeakVibe

Their movie Spiceworld is being attacked by critics even before its release. There are said to be lots of bras but not much of a script - and now someone has remembered it contains a clip of Glitter.

Gary who? Well, Glitter is the 54-year-old prince - or perhaps queen would be more accurate - of glam rock, a sparkling, completely over-the-top performer of rock parody.

The only trouble was that this week he took his computer into a nationwide chain of PC stores for attention and a nosy techno-nerd in the repair department happened to look in Glitter's hard disk.

And what did he find? Child pornography, apparently downloaded from the Internet.

The police raided Glitter's two homes and allegedly found more indecent pictures of children.

Glitter, a father of two who has been praised as a genuinely nice guy in the past, has been released without charge and is protesting his innocence.

Anyone who dabbles in child porn deserves a good visit to the courts. But the incident did beg the question: what was the computer repairman doing trawling through his private files in the first place? None of this helps the Spice Girls. Their GBP10 million (HK$131 million) movie is due to be released the day after Christmas - but who will want to see it as their star is fading rapidly? My 10-year-old daughter Camille knows about these things.

'Everyone has just got fed up with them, there's Spice Girl deodorant, Spice Girl crisps, Spice Girl everything, it's too much,' she said.

The girls kicked out Mr Fuller when sales of their latest album, Spiceworld, failed to match up to expectations and he worked them too hard.

Then they were booed off stage in Spain when they tried to get photographers to leave the audience - so precious were they about their image.

Never believe your own publicity, as a publicist once said.

Spanish TV insisted on referring to them by a phrase which translates along the lines of 'old slapper' - you get the idea? The Spice Girls professed to be the creators of Girl Power. Of course, they became nothing of the sort, just five good-looking and cute young females who were moulded by powerful men into becoming cash cows.

Nevertheless, none of them pretended they were in it for anything but the money. And with stardom in the United States on a scale British groups are not supposed to have, they have achieved a great deal.

But now, even for 10-year-olds, the Spice Girls are no longer cool. That has a resonance in the City of London where on Monday shares in EMI, the parent label of Virgin on which the Spice Girls record, fell. Dealers claimed the drop was a direct result of fears for the group's future.

A whole range of companies they endorse, from Pepsi to supermarket chains, are said to be worried. Could governments fall? Will we soon see their demise? No, not yet.

It was the Duke of Edinburgh who was once accused of saying the Beatles were 'on the wane'. His comment led to tonnes of newsprint analysing whether it was true.

'I actually said they were 'away',' the duke explained a few days later. Precisely.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tK%2FMqWWcp51krrPAyJyjnmdiZ31zf5FonqWhpKmys7%2BMrKeim5Viu7B5x56jqWWXoa6uecaao6w%3D