Demons that drive Geri

Rain was falling from a pewter sky on an early spring afternoon outside London's fashionable Holy Trinity Church off Knightsbridge as a tiny young woman, wearing dark glasses in spite of the gloom, darted out of a blacked-out Mercedes and ran towards the wooden doors.

Then the 29-year-old, who is just 5ft 1in and weighs between six and seven stone - at least 10lb under the recommended weight for her height - paused for a moment at the church's ornate entrance, one hand on the solid brass handle, and nervously looked back over her shoulder. Apparently satisfied that no one had spotted her, she disappeared inside.

This was one of the rare occasions when Geri Halliwell, one of Britain's most media-hungry and most frequently photographed celebrities, wanted anonymity.

Before her departure to Los Angeles in March, she had visited the church regularly to attend the Alpha Group, a trendy course on evangelical Christianity that has become a magnet for a surprisingly large number of the capital's wealthiest young professionals, who are seeking a spiritual dimension to their lives.

With her shock of dyed blonde hair hidden under a woollen hat, the nervous creature slipping into Holy Trinity was a far cry from the 'pop diva' whose metamorphosis from a hedonistic buxom redhead to a disciplined fragile waif has both fascinated and appalled us.

Yet after spending some months looking into her life, I am convinced that nervous creature engaged in a spiritual search is the real Geri Halliwell.

Wealth and acclaim have failed to banish the demons that torment her.

Now, new claims that she has not yet managed to shake off the eating disorder that blighted her early adulthood only strengthen my belief that Geri remains a young woman on the edge.

It is alleged that last week she was at the £500-a- day 'rehab clinic to the stars', Cottonwood de Tucson in Arizona, with a male friend who was later thrown out for his 'compulsive womanising'.

The 27-year-old, long-haired man later checked in to a nearby hotel and Geri was supposedly spotted cavorting in the sunshine with him by the pool.

Whatever the truth of the visit to Cottonwood, there seems little doubt that Geri is still battling her bulimia - despite her best efforts.

Only a year ago she was attending meetings of Overeaters Anonymous in a London church hall, where a sign on the wall reads: 'It's not what you're eating - it's what's eating you.'

She has also tried yoga, exercise, eccentric diets, even celibacy and now religion to see if they can provide the answer to what one Alpha group member calls 'the void at the heart of her life'.

Because behind that ultrawhite smile there is a lonely young woman who, as her position as one of Britain's pop queens comes under attack from talented new stars such as Dido, is terrified of losing the fame and adulation she has craved since childhood.

The smile also conceals her struggle to understand her own sexuality and come to terms with the failure of so many love affairs.

'I've never encountered anyone so confused about herself,' an Alpha member told me recently. 'It's as if Geri's never stopped to work out what being famous actually means, as if it's an end in itself, which is ridiculous.'

So Geri is engaged in a desperate search for a meaning to her life, and this quest is certain to drive the second volume of her autobiography, which she is working on in LA while staying with her friend, George Michael.

Due to be published just before Christmas, it will chart Halliwell's life after the Spice Girls and include accounts of her troubled relationships - with disc jockey Chris Evans, polo player Jamie Morrison, singer Robbie Williams and, most recently, Coffee Republic founder Bobby Hashemi, among others.

The book is also likely reveal that Halliwell has chosen to remain celibate for long periods over the past five years, so frightened is she of trusting any man who does not commit himself to her totally, and whom she cannot control completely.

Insiders at the publishers, Ebury Press, are predicting that the new book will be 'a much darker one' than its predecessor, reflecting not only the troubled star's battles with bulimia but also her obsession with her body - which has seen her lose more than 2st in the past two years.

Her body is one area of her life where she does have complete control.

It has seen her resort to a diet regime that demands that she never touches carbohydrates, relying instead on solely on protein and regular injections of vitamins - despite warnings that this can cause kidney and liver damage.

Her devotion to her workout programme is equally intense. According to one observer who saw her in action at a Chelsea gym recently: 'She didn't stop moving for a single moment.

' She was working out, pumping away with this determined look on her face, and she never made eye contact with anyone despite all the stares from other members.

'She looked good, not an ounce of surplus flesh, although she was a bit yellow, as if she'd been on the sunbed too often.'

The physical transformation has been remarkable and much admired. It prompted her to make an exercise video last year that was hugely successful.

People admiring her body

boosts her self-esteem. It also explains why the girl who posed for topless photographers and soft-porn merchants in the early days of her career still 'loves getting her kit off', in the words of one video director who has worked with her.

'I've never encountered anyone keener to show off their body,' he told me recently.

'The only trouble is,' he went on, 'Geri is so woefully thin now, she isn't as attractive as she thinks she is.'

Fitness guru Diana Moran, 61, agrees: 'She's like a bird now. I think she's lost too much weight and in that respect she isn't a good role model for younger girls.'

What the new book will not reveal is Geri's fear that her celebrity star is waning.

Last year, Geri Productions Limited, her principal business company, reported assets of only £1.38 million and sales of £2.35 million.

Her last album, Scream If You Wanna Go Faster, sold a disappointing 120,000 copies and was described by one reviewer as 'Shirley Bassey lite'. Her last single, Calling, reached only No7 in the charts last December, while its predecessor in August 2001 managed No 8.

New Musical Express pop expert Peter Robinson says: 'Geri used to be my favourite Spice Girl because she seemed so interesting, but she's been groping around trying to find her identity for ages - and she seems to be trying too hard now.'

NOT that this has limited the singer's legendary ambition. She wanted to sing at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in February - aware that rival Kylie Minogue had done so at the end of the Sydney Olympics in 2000 - but was rebuffed by the organisers.

She will go to any lengths to sustain her image, even if that means muscling in, as has been claimed, on a photocall with Hollywood heart-throb Harrison Ford at an awards ceremony recently, or throwing hysterical tantrums at record company meetings to ensure she gets her own way.

'Geri can't survive without the bright lights and the flash bulbs,' says one of her former publicists.

'She'd turn up for the opening of an envelope if she thought any photographers were going to be there - and she'd make sure she was wearing something to capture their attention, which usually means as little as possible.'

'Her attention- seeking and control freakery are just ways of keeping the demons at bay,' says another acquaintance.

This behaviour has driven away many of her oldest friends. Janine Raynor, from her native Watford, says now: 'She has a few friends around here, but not that many any more.'

One reason is that she can't stop herself telling them what to do. Singer Robbie Williams, who took her under his wing in 2000, became exasperated by her childish demands and possessive behaviour which prompted a revealing comment about her state of mind.

'She turned into a demonic little girl playing with dolls and a tea set,' Williams said after their friendship came to an end. 'She started speaking like a psychotic child and developed this possessed look. It was genuinely scaring me.'

According to psychologist Oliver James, Geri's problems stem from a troubled childhood rather than an overdose of fame.

'She seems to have pursued fame in the hope that it will provide her with the love and sense of control that were missing in her childhood,' he says.

And that brings us to what I believe is the central reason for the young singer's eccentric behaviour: her parents, and in particular her father.

AS GERI once admitted: 'I didn't always need everyone to love me. In the beginning I just wanted to show a few people that I could make it, like my mum and dad.'

That did not prove easy. Sadly, her parents often abandoned her to her own devices.

In his daughter's words, Laurence Francis Halliwell, who was 23 years older than his Spanish wife Ana Maria, was not only a 'womaniser and chancer' but a 'liar and a rogue', who had been born the illegitimate son of a Swedish merchant seaman and his Liverpudlian mother.

He was 50 when Geri was born, never had a regular job throughout her childhood, and her mother was forced to take cleaning jobs to support the family.

Raised as a Roman Catholic, Ana Maria Halliwell joined the Jehovah's Witnesses when she was very young, taking her young daughter with her as she went from door to door trying to convert others to join her newfound religion.

Her diminutive daughter Geri, nicknamed 'the dwarf' by her Spanish aunts because of her size, took refuge in dreams. 'At six, I imagined fame to be like a magic key that would unlock a door to a fantasy world where I wouldn't be lonely, poor or frightened,' she wrote later.

Clever enough to win a place at Watford Grammar School for Girls, the teenage Geri Halliwell also became, in her own words, 'a compulsive liar'.

And she was not afraid to live on the fringes of the law. Two years ago it emerged that the former Spice Girl was convicted at Bow Street magistrates' court in 1990 of handling a stolen Access card and Royal Bank of Scotland cheque book.

After pleading guilty, she was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £360.13 as compensation. She later dismissed the offences as 'relatively minor'.

Significantly, no mention of this episode was made in the first volume of her best-selling autobiography, If Only. Nor was there any sign of Geri's mother at her side during the court appearance.

Margaret MacLaughlin, a friend at the time, said afterwards: 'I went to court with her. She didn't have anyone else to turn to. You never saw her mother or her sister.' Shortly afterwards, the future Spice Girl was evicted from an illegal 'squat', where she had spent her 18th birthday.

She'd broken into the empty council-owned cottage on the South Oxhey estate in Watford and made it her home while she worked as a nightclub dancer and nude model.

By then Halliwell's parents had separated, but she never lost touch with her father. And his sudden death from a heart attack in 1993, when she was 21, hit her hard.

'I felt gutted, angry, hurt, denied and deprived,' she said later. 'I felt robbed of something that was mine. He belonged to me. He was my biggest fan.'

It plunged the singer into a crisis from which she has still to recover fully. 'I was alone and desperate,' she told a German magazine last year. 'I saw no reason for his death. We were always together - I still miss him.'

Within months she was suffering the first bout of the eating disorders that have plagued her, 'binge-eating' to compensate for her lack of self-esteem.

'Geri's never really recovered from her father's death,' says one former school friend at Watford Girls' Grammar. 'He'd been the one who'd always tried to make her feel part of the family - instead of the "cuckoo" she used to call herself. With his death, she didn't think she belonged anywhere.'

Significantly, she dedicated her autobiography to her late father and compared herself to Shakespeare's Hamlet - forever condemned to 'living with my father's ghost'.

UNTIL she comes to terms with this loss, it may be that the peace of mind she seeks will elude her. Although she bought a £2 million Buckinghamshire mansion two years ago, she has barely lived in it (and it is now for sale), any more than she lives in the £500,000 Holland Park flat she bought shortly afterwards.

Instead, until her move to LA two months ago she chose to live with 56-year- old interior designer Nina Campbell in Chelsea, conveniently near to her Knightsbridge church.

One of the designer's friends confessed to me that he thought the young singer was 'looking for some kind of mother figure - or a guru'.

'That jolly, chubby, upbeat girl we used to know,' says one old friend, 'has vanished. She seems unable to trust anyone she can't control.

'The only person Geri trusts now is Harry,' adds the friend, referring to the singer's shih-tzu dog, acquired from the Dog's Home in Battersea three years ago.

Not only does she now take Harry with her everywhere - including to business meetings, where he is given his own chair - she has also taken to conducting what one record company executive described to me as conversations with the pooch.

When she joined the chic Holmes Place health club in Kensington, she asked the manager to 'look after' Harry when she went to exercise.

When the manager politely told her that dogs were banned from the club, she stormed out - only to return a week later with the dog. She took him to the club's restaurant and fed him a muffin.

Like Norma Desmond, the faded Hollywood star played by Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder's unforgettable film Sunset Boulevard, Geri Halliwell seems to have retired into her own private world.

It's a world where only celebrity seems to matter - but for how much longer? The gilt, it seems, is finally wearing off the former Spice Girl's gingerbread.