A New Chapter in Mel C’s Life
In July last year, the former Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm made headlines by introducing her new Australian boyfriend to the world. The 51-year-old singer is now in a relationship with Australian model Chris Dingwall. The couple first caught the attention of the public when they were spotted together at a music festival and officially became a couple in July 2024.
Here’s everything we know about Mel C’s new boyfriend:
How Did Mel C and Chris Dingwall Meet?
According to an interview with EUPHORIA, Chris and Mel first met on the celebrity dating app Raya in 2023. However, the pair were first photographed together at Glastonbury in 2024. The couple then made things official by attending Wimbledon together.
The clues were there from May 2024 when the former Spice Girl shared all the hotels and resorts she had visited while in Australia for her DJ tour and Chris posted a similar post about the “last couple of weeks” soon after.
In January, she responded to a post Chris shared on Instagram to celebrate her birthday. “Happy Birthday @melaniecmusic (for yesterday)! Been a beautiful year. Looking forward to another amazing one with you,” to which she replied, “Thank you my love”.
Before meeting Chris, the ‘Never Be The Same Again’ singer told the Not My Bagg with Joe & George Baggs podcast that she had resorted to online dating to find love again.
“What is it about Hinge? I’m single, and I’m having a little look around, it’s slim pickings,” she said. “There seem to be loads of hot girls but all the hot guys are gay.”
What Has Mel C Said About Her New Relationship?
On May 1st, Mel released her ninth studio album Sweat. In a chat with EUPHORIA about the album, she revealed that the emotions behind her break up with her long-term partner, Joe Marshall, and her subsequent relationship with Chris a year later, helped to impact the album.
“I’d ended a long-term relationship, and that was in the real kind of untangling and bitterness, so there was quite a lot of anger to express, which shows up on the album in places,” she explained.
“[The album] also crossed into the time when I met somebody new — I fell in love, and then this whole new relationship began. It’s about this journey — having a horrible experience, breaking up with somebody, meeting somebody new and being like, ‘[Bleep], here we go again.’ You know, have I learned nothing? But it’s like, [bleep] it — it’s love. I’m gonna do it again. Yeah, and again and again, because what’s life about?”
Who Has Mel C Dated in the Past?
When it comes to their love lives, Melanie C is certainly the most private of the five Spice Girls. Even in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the 51-year-old chose to keep her relationships on the more private side.
Her most notable previous relationships include her manager Joe Marshall whom she dated for seven years from 2015 to 2022, as well as Thomas Starr who she was in a relationship with from 2002 to 2012. The couple also share a 15-year-old daughter together.
“It was my first serious, long-term adult relationship,” she told Bustle in 2022. “I’d spent a lot of time alone or in relationships that didn’t really amount to much. There was probably a little bit of trepidation, but also the feeling that it was my time to be settled.”
Mel also briefly dated singer Robbie Williams, Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis and Five boy band member Jason “J” Brown.
“When Robbie first took an interest in me, I was taken aback to be honest,” she wrote in her memoir Who I Am: My Story. “I first properly met Robbie in Cologne in the summer of 1996. We ended up hanging out platonically, but I went up to his room and he gave me one of his tracksuits, a white Adidas one with black stripes. It was way too big for me, but I treasured it,” she continued.
“Throughout my time in the Spice Girls, I was pretty much the only single one. I’d had boyfriends at school and a couple of relationships through college but I had been single for a while when I joined the band.”
