Mel C is joining the battle against smokers.

Sporty Spice has joined an anti-smoking TV and poster campaign that aims to stop children from smoking, The London Sun reports.

Mel's campaign shows her puckering up to a cartoon baboon and uttering the unforgettable line: "I would rather kiss a baboon's butt than kiss a smoker".

The campaign is being run by The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.

Melanie C, previously known as Sporty Spice, plays the Guvernment on Monday night.

 Sound familiar? It should.

 The fact that she played the same venue on behalf of her solo debut album, Northern Star, in October 1999, isn't lost on her either.

 "It is a longer show now and it's 100 times better," she is saying down the line from London recently. "(Before) we'd only just gone out on the road. We'd only had a few weeks rehearsal and were quite new. But now we've had a lot more experience. So it is a very different show."

 Mel C, who says the Spice Girls have no plans to work together for the next year, said she also feels more comfortable as a frontwoman. She's backed by a five-piece band.

 "I'm just getting more experienced. I'm having a great time on stage. I've always loved it, but it's not as frenzied as it used to be. I think I'm a bit more in control now."

 In other words, it's less about screaming fans and Spice Girls-style choreographed moves and more about singing.

 "It's funny because I used to dance -- I was a dancer for years -- but I've never liked singing and dancing at the same time. I think so much is lost in the singing then. For me, it's about music. You're trying to express yourself with song, and it's just getting messed up by thinking about dance routines and timing and everything. I think it's a bit of a '90s thing."

 Much like the Spice Girls themselves, whose last album, Forever, stiffed, leading to widespread speculation that the group would disband. Mel C's own comments, in particular, helped fuel the breakup rumours, most recently in an interview with Reuters, but the Spices remain together. All four members are pursuing solo careers, however.

 "Everyone's got a fascination with all the relationships between the Spice Girls," says Mel C. "And you know, we're just like any group of friends. Sometimes we don't speak for a couple of weeks and then we'll call up each other or we'll go and hang out. It's just like any friendship, there's no big mystery to it."

 But for Mel C, lingering Spice Girl memories meant that her solo album -- which has sold 40,000 copies in Canada and 2.2 million worldwide -- took a while to catch on.

 "I think people were quite skeptical at first. It took a long time for them to get over the Sporty Spice tag and, like anybody, I'm not a one-dimensional person. I think just as more singles have come out and more people become aware of the music, they realize that it is good."

 Her most successful markets, per capita, have been Northern Europe and Scandinavia.

 "It's quite bizarre -- all northern territories went for it, so my next album's going to have to be called 'Southern something,' jokes Mel C.

 She hopes to begin recording her second solo album next month and has already expressed the desire to hook up with Eminem as a duet partner. As for others on her wish list, Mel C said a duet with The Material Girl isn't in the works.

 "Madonna is someone I've longed to work with for a long, long time, but I don't know whether it's the right time. She's living in London now, but I've never approached her. I'm sure she's heard the rumours, so I'd have to wait until I have enough courage to ask her, really." (More on: Spice Girls).

As a Spice Girl, she's enjoyed and endured both ends of the celebrity scrutiny spectrum - from legions of loyal fans hanging off her every move to the media snarkily speculating about her weight, sexuality and mental health.

Somehow, Melanie Chisholm, a.k.a. Mel C, a.k.a. Sporty Spice, manages to remain surprisingly chipper through it all. From the tracksuit-wearing, jump-kicking, soccer-loving Spice Girl to a somewhat rangier, raunchier, solo rocker-chick (who still loves soccer), Melanie has "C-een" it all. Including that really bad pun.

Mel C plays the Winspear Centre tonight to perform tracks from her solo album Northern Star, a far cry from the HMV stage at Der Mega Mall where she played last December.

We caught up with her by phone while she was recuperating at her London pad between tour stops.

SUN: Almost since the beginning you've been singled out as the most talented of the Spice Girls. Has it ever caused tension within the group?

MEL C: We've all had lots of compliments but we've all had lots of put-downs as well. To keep our feet on the ground, we've always tried not to listen to any of it, really, and just gone on and done what we've wanted to.

All the Spice Girls are very talented, I don't think we would have been as successful as we were if there were any weak links.

SUN: Are you satisfied with the sales of Northern Star?

MEL C: It's done brilliantly. I hadn't envisaged how successful I wanted it to be, I just kind of went with the flow. It was quite a slow start and it took quite a while for some people to see me as more than Sporty Spice. But I think it's a great album and I'm very proud of it.

SUN: A couple of your bandmates are now Spice Moms. Any plans to get hitched and start a brood of little Mels?

MEL C: No, I'm quite happy. I'm just kind of dating guys and stuff and I'm having fun and being youthful.

SUN: Since you've struck out on your own, has the attention from the British popular press let up at all?

MEL C: It feels like it's getting worse. Not personally, but just generally. They're becoming more and more cruel, offensive and intrusive. It comes in waves. All they need is a comment I've said so they can blow it out of proportion, or a picture that isn't very flattering of me and they make (a big deal) out of that.

More recently I had to postpone some dates on the UK tour because I was recovering from an illness where I'd lost my voice. That was purely the reason why I was doing it, but they (the British papers) just put it down to mental problems and my depression returning, which was completely untrue.

SUN: Would you have preferred to have kept your bout with depression out of the media entirely? (Newspapers revealed last October that Chisholm was taking antidepressants. She says she's since recovered.)

MEL C: I definitely wouldn't have spoke about it in the tabloids. Maybe in my own time when I felt ready to talk about it I would have chosen a good publication and a good journalist to speak to about it. But somebody leaked to the newspaper that I was taking antidepressants.

I think it's a very serious subject and it's pushed under the carpet in this country, and people wrongly think it's something to be ashamed of.

SUN: What do you think of the whole Popstars phenomenon, and the fact record companies no longer even try to pretend that they're not prefabricating bands?

MEL C: I think it makes everything we've done look cheap, and people think that's the way the Spice Girls started. It was not like that at all. I just hope (the Popstars winners) are happy. They're in a very controlled environment, I feel like they've already been exploited by having shown all their emotions on TV.

It's just so easy for a record company or a management company to invest in some kids with an ounce of talent, and work them to death to make them famous, and then drop everything in a few years when they've milked everything they can out of it.

SUN: I'm going to name some Canadian female music stars, and I'd like you to tell me if you've heard them. First, Alanis Morissette.

MEL C: I love Alanis Morissette, she's great. I went to see her show two years ago when I was in L.A. and she just blew me away.

SUN: Shania Twain.

MEL C: She's not really my taste, but I really respect her for what she's done.

SUN: Nelly Furtado.

MEL C: No, I don't know ... oh, yes I do! Does she sing that song, 'I'm like a bird ...' Yeah, I love her! She's been on MTV all over the place and we're all singing it, it's a really catchy song. Lovely! I didn't know she was Canadian. We were all trying to figure out where she was from.

SUN: And how about Mitsou?

MEL C: Um ... no.

Mel C chat transcript