Aged 11, I danced in my pyjamas to the Spice Girls. Their debut hit Wannabe was released in 1996 just before I started a new all-girls school and I worshipped them.

Not because they stood for breast-beating "girl power" - my friends and I didn't ever wear bras, so burning them was unthinkable - but because they were adroitly marketed real-life cartoon characters with sparkly outfits, big shoes and humalong pop.

Just over a decade later, here I was in the same building as them, getting ready to belt out every single line. There were a few men in the audience but most seemed to be attached to a wife or girlfriend. And despite the reports, only a few empty seats dotted the O2 - and the frenzied girly screaming filled every chink of space anyway.

Shortly after David Beckham and his boys were ushered into the front row, the Spice Women appeared in the traditional puff of smoke.

Of course, they looked a bit ropey. Melanie Chisholm, or to give her her real name, Sporty Spice, looked atrocious in a shiny gold tracksuit which seemed dangerously flammable.

Posh danced like a Thunderbirds puppet, and Ginger desperately shimmied as if on acid.

But the music was pop perfection. My highlight unquestionably came during Mama, when the Spice progeny were paraded on stage. Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz, Phoenix, Angel and Beau (is it embarrassing that I didn't even have to use Google for that?) were handed over to their jiggling mothers wearing green bug-like earphones.

Geri screamed out that the children were their "proudest accomplishments yet" - though her daughter, Bluebell, was the only one missing from proceedings.

She was right about their children, but the Spices should be justly proud of this show, too.

I felt 11 all over again, and now what I want, what I really, really want is a copy of their Greatest Hits album in my stocking. Girl power turned out to be a pretty silly phrase, but as silly experiences go, the girls excelled themselves.