Posh, Sporty, Scary, Baby and Ginger – twenty years after making their Brit Pop debut, the now fully grown Spice Girls still can’t shake their nicknames.

Victoria Beckham has even forged an entirely new career for herself as a respected New York Fashion Week designer, but do you think she can step out as a 41-year-old woman without being introduced as Posh at some point through the day?

It’s likely part of the reason she’s not keen on the rumoured Spice reunion.

But before you say they’ve only got themselves to blame - they did after all descend upon mainstream media of their own accord - hear what Melanie Brown (aka Mel B, aka Scary Spice) has to say on the subject.

Explaining in a new interview who was behind the catchy nicknames, she says: “It was actually a lazy journalist that couldn't be bothered to remember all our names, so he just gave us nicknames.”

The ‘lazy journalist’ being Peter Loraine, editor of Top of the Pops magazine at the time.

“And we were like, ‘Oh, well, that kind of works. I don't mind my name. Do you like your name? Baby? Posh?’ We were like, ‘Let's just go with it.’”

Talking to HuffPost Live, Brown adds: “I'm very kind of in-your-face. I was even more so back then. I was, what, 17, 18, like, ‘What! What do you want?!’ So I guess I could have come off as Scary. But I like my name.”

How the Spice Girls really got their nicknames