Your band may take a year off, but if you are a Spice Girl you just can't keep out of the headlines. Following Mel G's baby and solo career, Mel C's solo career, Posh's baby, Baby's solo career and ex-Ginger's solo career (stop them, not me, if you are confused already), this week has seen a new twist with the tabloids screaming about "Skeletal Spice". It is easy to forget the Spices are actually a band.

Their first tour since Geri Halliwell's departure makes the Spices look as unified as the Borgias. The winter wonderland stage set has presumably been designed to enable them to remain as far apart as possible. Occasionally they meet in the middle, then an orchestra appears there so they don't meet much at all.

The same could be said of their harmonies. With a curious lack of atmosphere for a sold-out arena, at times it is like a gigantic game show, with Baby Spice (the non-thinking person's Melinda Messenger) in the role of inane compere.

As well as tiny tasselled outfits, the girls are wearing battery packs (for their microphones), but they could be robots. When Mel G speaks it is like being assaulted by a foghorn. Mel C spends two hours on auto-pilot. Only Skel- . . . sorry, Posh, is rather captivating. Not because of her reported thinness, but because she occasionally looks ill at ease, and faintly human.

There are ice skaters, fireworks, so few hits that Wannabe is played twice, and things only erupt when their cover of Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody unites the kids and parents. Iceworld is a frozen spectacle of empty celebrity. If they can force themselves, they should listen to their own words: "Stop right now, thank you very much, we need somebody with the human touch".

***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible