Mel B’s regret over split from ‘soulmate’ and ‘love of her life’ Eddie Murphy

When Mel B’s eyes met Eddie Murphy’s across a crowded room, she knew he was her soulmate and the love of her life.

Which is why it hurts the Spice Girl so much that she let him slip through her fingers after less than a year together.

The comedy legend treated her to private jet flights to exotic locations and there was talk of marriage, but when she fled Los Angeles for Leeds while pregnant after a disagreement over where they would live, it all fell apart.

“We had something special that I’ve never really truly felt with anybody else,” she recalls. “I’ve thought I’ve had it, but they’ve lied. His was pure. He is the love of my life. He always will be.”

Mel’s 2006 relationship with Eddie looked like a fling at the time, with what appeared to be an unplanned pregnancy and him disputing paternity.

But according to the singer, 43, nothing could be further from the truth.

“He showed me what true love feels like, and for that I have the utmost admiration and respect for him,” says Mel, who had previously been married to dancer Jimmy Gulzar.

She and Eddie hit it off after meeting at a party at his home in Beverly Hills in June 2006. He had already contacted her and tried to take her out.

Mum-of-three Mel remembers being very nervous but also stunned by how quickly she fell for him.

“He wanted to have a date with me by myself, I was like, ‘no. Get him to do a dinner party at his house or something like that’. And so I went along to his house and there was a massive, massive dinner party going on. I’m like, oh my God. Where is he?

“We first met, I saw him across the room, he saw me and then I freaked out because I’ve never had somebody look at me like that. It was such a familiar look. As in, it felt like home. I could see my soulmate. So I ran to the restroom. Then I left and I went home.”

Shaken Mel made up an excuse that she was going to a friend’s party at the plush Mondrian hotel in West Hollywood, but Eddie called her bluff and moved his party there.

“I was like oh God, I’ve got to put my make-up back on, I’ve got to get dressed; go to the Mondrian because I lied about the Mondrian,” she says.

“And there he was, with his party at the Mondrian that he’d moved from his house in Beverly Hills to West Hollywood. I’m like, oh God, that’s really nice that you did that.

“I got all like jittery again, and I’m not a nervous person; I went, ‘I’m just gonna go to the bathroom.’

“And he goes, ‘Over my dead body.’ And he walked with me, behind me, to the bathroom. Escorted me, waited for me, then brought me back to the table. And then from that day, he said, ‘Can I spend every day with you?’.

Mel began to spend more and more time at Eddie’s Hollywood home and there was talk of marriage after just a couple of months.

She says when she asked him to take her away one weekend, he booked a private jet and flew them both to Mexico at just a few hours notice.

“I’m the true romantic kind of love story kind of girl, I wanted him,” says Mel of the dad of her daughter Angel.

“He asked my dad if he could take his daughter’s hand in marriage. He flew my dad in and he asked him, properly. He’s a gentleman. Then we designed some rings together and then we planned the baby and we got pregnant – and then I felt suffocated.”

Things went quickly downhill after Mel got pregnant and there were also reports of her clashing with Eddie’s mother Lillian.

After a dispute over living arrangements she fled to Leeds, hoping that Eddie would follow her or fight hard to win her back but he never did, despite speaking to Mel’s mum on the phone.

Then he dropped a bombshell in a promotional interview for a new film.

“I don’t know whose child that is until it comes out and has a blood test. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” he said, in a move which infuriated Mel.

Looking back, she says: “We were both to blame. I wouldn’t have said that publicly and he apologises to this day about that. He wishes he never said it, because that baby was planned; we planned that baby together and we were madly in love and it just went wrong, dramatically went wrong.

"But I’m the kind of person in those kind of situations if something feels morally incorrect, for me – especially back then – I wasn’t gonna back down."

The passionate, intense relationship ended in December 2006.

By the time their Angel was born on April 3, Eddie was engaged to film producer Tracey Edmonds. A paternity test proved Eddie was the father.

Mel and Eddie are now friends again, and since she split from her second husband, Stephen Belafonte, Eddie is back in Angel’s life.

But she knows she has no chance of getting back together with him, saying: “He’s very happy with his fiancée and they’re on to their second baby.”

Mel also talks candidly on ITV’s Life Stories taking cocaine – and how she overdosed on pills and wrote a suicide note to escape her toxic relationship with Belafonte. She says he left her with just US$900 following her divorce and losing her £60million fortune.

“I know what I came into the marriage with and I know how much money I left with. $900. I was the only earner in my family so I worked for 10 years solid.

“I wrote my note, saying, you know my kids, I want them to go and live and be with my mum, because this guy’s a monster and if he doesn’t kill me, which I knew he would at some point, then I’m just gonna do it myself.”

Mel says she snorted a line of cocaine in the mornings at height of her problems with Belafonte, whom she was married to from 2007 to 2017.

“That was my coping mechanism but I never wanted to do it,” she says. “I did drugs and I drank and sexually I was experimental. Did I want to do that all the time? No. Was I forced to do that a lot of the time? Yes. Was it my choice? Not really, but I was in it, way too deep. Most abused women suffer from that too. They have to deal with that.”

However, Mel insists she wouldn’t change much about her life and career.

“I don’t have any regrets,” she says. I wouldn’t be able to be this person that I am, I wouldn’t be able to be patron of Women’s Aid, I wouldn’t be able to be at 10 Downing Street talking about what I went through if I hadn’t gone through it.”

Belafonte responds to Mel’s claims in a statement saying she is: “manufacturing these things with no proof.”

* Piers Morgan’s Life Stories returns to ITV on Saturday at 9.15pm.

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