The old Spice Girls rivalry that's REALLY driving Geri Halliwell: Sources tell ALISON BOSHOFF what she really, really wants

Geri Halliwell, one would think, has much to be thankful for. After a turbulent few years, her husband Christian Horner appears to have secured one of the biggest payouts in sports management history.

According to reports this week, the former Red Bull F1 Racing CEO has banked a whopping £76million – some £67million believed to be for ‘loss of office’ – the remainder his salary after he was ousted from his role last summer, 18 months after allegations of inappropriate behaviour were made against him by a female colleague.

Horner, who’d won 14 world championships with the team, was cleared of wrongdoing in two internal investigations but a combination of office politics, a perceived dip in the team’s performance and leaked screenshots of 79 WhatsApp messages between him and the woman effectively sealed his fate. Horner always denied the claims that were made.

Not even Geri in a trademark white dress and air of forced nonchalance – rushing to her husband’s side at the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix when the scandal broke – could distract from the furore.

It was a reversal of fortunes that would test the tightest of couples.

But against the odds, the Halliwell-Horners appear to have weathered the storm.

Horner, whose payday will no doubt be supplemented by the publication of his autobiography Drive later this month, also has plans for a score-settling comeback in motorsport, with Red Bull rivals Ferrari.

Enough surely to warrant the popping of a champagne cork or two at Horner towers and to revive the former Spice Girl’s dreams of being Queen of the Cotswolds?

Alas, I gather, such assumptions are premature.

According to one source who knows Geri well: ‘She has all the money in the world but now what she wants is social acceptance. She intends to rise to the top of the poshest social sets she can find.’

And the first phase of that strategy is a home to match her ambitions.

According to friends, the couple’s current abode – a palatial multi-million pound Grade II-listed house near the Cotswolds – is no longer deemed grand enough.

Bought by Christian in the noughties for around £2million, it has undergone a number of renovations since his 2015 marriage to Geri and now boasts indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a kitchen in which only the Aga belonging to the previous owner survived the makeover.

There is even space for Geri to train her beloved racehorses. West Northamptonshire district council recently granted permission for them to build a large horse walker exercise pen and Geri has recently set up two new companies which will see her training horses as a business.

It’s a new hobby which, by happy coincidence, seems to be cementing her position in the heart of well-heeled country circles.

Yet there is more, much more, to Geri’s ambitions.

One associate told me: ‘What she wants the most is a big house – a really big house – and a gong.’

And if that calls to mind another member of the Spice Girls – step forward Victoria Beckham – that is no chance comparison.

‘She also wants a house which is much bigger than the Beckhams,’ I’m told.

Sir David and Lady Beckham own a spectacular home in Great Tew, in the Cotswolds, and earlier this summer the Halliwell-Horners thought they had found a property to trump it. Edgcote House in Northamptonshire – on the market for £45million, situated in 1,704 acres with 1,149-acre commercial arable farm plus ‘renowned equestrian facilities’ comprising two professional racing yards with ‘significant sporting potential’ – appeared to tick all their boxes.

The couple are believed to have made an offer on it in June, only to be ‘blown out of the water’ by an anonymous entrepreneur who bid £52million, and clinched the sale from under their noses in August. The property has now disappeared from the website of estate agents Savills.

One detail, however, will not have been forgotten by Geri.

As if the home were not perfect enough it had also featured in the BBC’s famous 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as the home of Mr Darcy’s rival Charles Bingley.

For Geri, a writer of children’s books, has considerable literary pretensions and has ‘moved on’ from her singing career.

One friend tells me: ‘Geri has no interest in the world of the Spice Girls or in pop music. Instead she likes to talk about literature and acting, and is very much a social climber.’

Another confides that she believes she could have studied literature at Oxford University if only her father, Lawrence, hadn’t died when she was a teenager and set her on a rackety course of dancing and glamour modelling.

Indeed one of the few aspects of her old life she hangs on to is her competition with Victoria.

For along with her property aspirations, Geri would like that ‘gong’ to match her former fellow Spice Girl. ‘At the minimum she would like an MBE like Victoria has, and for Christian to get a knighthood like David Beckham. That might seem unlikely but just look at how David Beckham rehabilitated himself after his sex scandal [an affair he has always denied with Rebecca Loos, his PA while in Spain playing for Real Madrid],’ says my source.

Perhaps Geri has been inspired by Beckham’s friendship with the King – the pair share a passion for the countryside and organic farming – as she too has cultivated an unlikely bond with Queen Camilla. According to one: ‘You should listen to her speaking voice now. She sounds posher than The Queen.’ Certainly the two women have spent a considerable amount of time together with Geri backing the Queen’s reading initiatives and also supporting her at various engagements linked to the Maggie’s cancer centres. Apparently they have a warm friendship.

‘Geri is very good at being charming,’ a friend observed. ‘She is a most incredible networker.’ She is also, by all accounts, an exemplary wife. Some have even dubbed her a ‘tradwife’ after the trend for women to assume a supportive, 1950s role and subjugate their own careers to their husbands.

As well as being mother to their son, Monty, nine, Geri has a daughter Bluebell, 20, from a brief relationship with film producer Sacha Gervasi. She is also step-mother to Horner’s teenage daughter, Olivia, whom he had with long-term partner Beverley Allen, who died last year of eye cancer at the age of 58.

In his forthcoming book, Horner talks warmly about his former partner and says that they managed to stay friends. She is buried in a churchyard near their house.

Well-placed sources say that Geri is deeply committed to Horner, whom she first met at the 2009 Grand Prix – when she and her then boyfriend were guests of Bernie Ecclestone – and became romantically involved with in 2014, marrying the following year. At the height of the inappropriate messaging scandal, Geri – I am told – ‘chose to believe him’ and has remained loyal by Horner’s side since. Behind closed doors the situation was at times, understandably, rather different. In an interview last month to promote his forthcoming book, Horner said the revelations made his wife ‘furious’ with her ‘reading him the riot act’ over the situation.

While he said he couldn’t discuss the ‘truth’ of what happened with the woman due to his settlement with Red Bull, in Drive he describes how he learned of the allegations. A lawyer rang him and asked if he was sitting down. In the kitchen, Geri was getting the children ready for school. When everyone had been packed off for the day, he told her of the breaking scandal.

He says Geri responded with, ‘Just tell your truth.’

He added: ‘I was never given a clear explanation (for being sacked) other than that they felt performance had slipped a little... They wanted to go in a different direction. I was told that it was more Christian Horner Racing than Red Bull Racing.’

He added that his huge payment – dwarfing the £3million allegedly paid to the woman at the centre of the claims – proved his innocence. ‘It demonstrates that you’ve done nothing wrong, they just don’t want you any more. If somebody’s prepared to pay that much money for you not to be there? And I think if you look at that team 12 months down the line, it’s lost its mojo, its presence, its vibe.’

He remains a divisive figure in Formula 1 and was essentially the villain of the piece in Netflix’s popular documentary series Drive To Survive.

As he admits in his book: ‘I’ve always pushed the boundaries. Because if it’s vanilla, you’ll achieve vanilla. You have to strive and take people on the journey with you.’

Elsewhere he says of his attitude to life: ‘It is better, and easier, to ask for forgiveness than for permission.’

Horner says that he has learned much from wife Geri about dealing with the media.

He says Geri has really helped him deal with public scrutiny. ‘Before I met her, I was well known within Formula 1. But after I met her, I went from the back pages to the front pages. Within the world in which I operated, you had a relationship with the media where we both needed each other – a working relationship. Suddenly, this whole new world, it was horrible.’

Geri’s advice seems to be mostly to just look at the pictures and not read the words.

‘She’ll look at the pictures in an article; she’ll never read the article,’ he said recently, with undisguised admiration.

Describing her as ‘an incredibly strong character’ he says that when he was booed at an event recently she told him: ‘They only boo if they care.’

Brickbats, of course, have never bothered Geri. Raised on a council estate in Watford, her father was a car dealer and took her banger racing as a child, instilling a love for motorsport.

Today, she has shown no indication she is ready to throw in the towel on either her marriage or her ambitions.

While she may no longer sing and dance, she has instead honed her acting abilities and has a role in the forthcoming TV series of Only Murders In The Building.

And in her husband she has found someone who matches her drive.

Horner is now ready to return to a version of public life, and to take up a new job if he can find one that’s just what he wants.

‘You need a reason to get out of bed in the morning,’ he says.

Geri also has her eyes on a future in which she’s the cream-clad mistress of the social scene – preferably with a title.

Horner said: ‘I have a beautiful wife and an amazing family that I love very much. But, you know, Beverley, lying in the graveyard just over the road, demonstrates that in life, you’ve got one shot. And you can either go for it or you can cruise.’

Even with £76million in the bank, it seems there’s little danger of the slow lane yet.