'Spanish Spice' Geri is still 'Queen of Shocks': Singer unrecognisable as Elizabeth I

Earliest fans of the now-defunct girl-band remember the great-granddaughter of a Córdoba mayor as 'Ginger Spice', in her iconic Union Jack mini-dress, and those who followed each member's musical career as solo artists still have images of a stick-thin blonde Geri Halliwell on rollerskates on the cover of her second album, Scream If You Wanna Go Faster, which included the most famous cover to date of The Weather Girls' It's Raining Men.

Now into the sixth year of her marriage to Red Bull boss and former racing driver Christian Horner – whose surname she has taken for her public rôle as well as in private – her more recent celebrity appearances have been as a judge on the UK's BBC One music talent show, All Together Now, with a more 'grown-up', elegant look and mid-length brown hair, having left behind the tousled redhead pop-diva and the later, colourfully-sporting blonde-bombshell image.

The public face of Geri has been radically different at varying stages of her high-profile career since the launch of the Spice Girls in 1996, but every new, very individual style has been championed and become an instant trend which fans for the last 24 years have been falling over themselves to follow.

Yet her apparently effortless string of highly-acclaimed and much-loved 'looks' were, for most of her adult life, a mere front for a crippling insecurity: Her long battle with bulimia and anorexia was something she eventually opted not to hide any longer, although she says she has finally managed to control these demons with the help of motherhood, to Bluebell Madonna, 14 (daughter of screenwriter Sacha Gervasi), Montague Horner, who will be four in January, and stepmotherhood, to Olivia, her husband's daughter from his last relationship.

The latest vision of 'Ginger Spice', though, is the biggest shocker ever for Geri's long-term followers – purely because it is so different to any other persona she has presented to the public, but which once again reaffirms the extent of her versatility in the arts and entertainment world.

Wearing a stern, not-amused expression that belies the wide-open, gregarious nature everyone associates with the half-Spanish singer, a mass of red coils held in place by an elaborate crown, seemingly no makeup, but in fact with the full stage paint needed to give her an alabaster, English-rose complexion, and oceans of deep-red satin to turn her into the 16th-century monarch make the vivacious lass behind the successful Schizophonic album completely unrecognisable.

Although she plays a very-British Queen in a very-British screen series, half of Geri's DNA is from Aragón: Her mother, Ana María Hidalgo (now Ana María Halliwell) was born and grew up in the Pyrénéen city of Huesca.

Her dad Laurence Halliwell's parents are Finnish, from Korsnäs, and Ana María's granddad – Geri's great-granddad – was mayor of the picturesque Andalucía city of Córdoba.

When Geri released her 1999 single Mi Chico Latino, fans assumed at first that she had had to learn to pronounce the two or three lines in Spanish in the song – but according to celebrity media, she grew up speaking the language with her mother and is fluent in it; in fact, it is her second native tongue.

And some would argue that Geri's explosive, vibrant and passionate character which made her one of the most extravert of the Spice Girls back in their day – tamed now by her age, 48, and family life, but still fizzing under the surface - has more than a hint of the 'typically-Mediterranean' in it.

First picture: Geri Halliwell on New Year's Eve 2017 (Max Village/Wikimedia Commons)

Second picture: Geri as Queen Elizabeth I of England (Rainbow Woman on YouTube)