Mel C thinks Zayn Malik would benefit from "professional help" to help him deal with fame.
The Spice Girls star understands what it is like to grow up in the spotlight and believes the One Direction singer would find some support helpful as similar things made it easier for her to cope with the pressures of her own success.
She said: "I can imagine he’s really struggling. Fame on that scale is a massive thing to come to terms with and to get your head around. He probably needs some professional help to learn how to deal with it, that’s what I did."
Whilst the 42-year-old singer dreamed of fame and fortune, she admits the reality was very different.
She added: "I spent my childhood wanting to be a famous pop star, travelling the world – and it bloody well happened! But the reality, as brilliant and exciting and amazing as it was, is there was a flip side: the exhaustion and the vulnerability and having to deal with people having an opinion of you. That didn’t factor into the fantasy.
"We were taken away from reality and we lived in a bubble, and then you’re plonked back into the real world and it’s like what the f**k? I had to be integrated back into society. That was the difficult bit. It was a total head f**k. You get there eventually, but it was a journey."
Meanwhile, Mel has opened up about being bullied as a young woman but insists she is a "lot more confident" now than she was when she was younger.
She told the December issue of Attitude magazine: "’Version of Me’ is about being bullied, about being in a situation as a young adult where I felt bullied and how that has affected me, and moulded me in a way. Unfortunately, being bullied can really damage people, and even when you are stronger and over it, it can still be in the background, undermining you. I hope people will identify with that track.
"Now I’m older, I’m a lot more confident and I will not be s**t upon. But when I was younger I let people s**t on me. What’s done is done but I’d have liked to have been a bit stronger. When we were kids we were so hard on each other and so determined to succeed that if anybody fell out of line they were quickly brought back … [It was] a lot of pressure to live under. We all handled it differently."
Mel C: Zayn Malik ‘needs professional help’ to cope with fame
