Famous five

It's 20 years since the release of 'Wannabe', so naturally the time is ripe for an appraisal of the Spice Girls' legacy. The BBC's John McKie sums it up nicely: pop music cynically marketed at "those hard-to-get pre-teens who the music industry had previously considered as a small market"; the advent of the band-as-brand, an unashamed cash cow; celebrity obsession (referred to as "Kardashianisation" by one of McKie's interviewees, Music Week's Paul Gorman), thanks to Posh and Becks; and "Girl Power", a slogan that was superficially empowering but proved vacuous in that the quintet were manufactured and moulded by men. Not a great deal to celebrate there, then...