Melanie Slade
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Melanie Slade (born 1989), sometimes referred to as Mel Slade, became well-known before and during the football World Cup of June-July 2006 as the girlfriend of Arsenal FC player Theo Walcott, whose selection for the England squad generated a good deal of interest and comment. As such, Slade was one of the more talked about "WAGs" (as the wives and girlfriends of the England players came to be known), though, in her case, this was more as an individual than as part of a wider group that, through press coverage, came to be associated with shopping and partying. Although being one of the quiet WAGs at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Slade was one of the more popular WAGs for her good looks, sweet nature and sudden thrust into the limelight.
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[edit] Family background
Melanie Slade is one of four children. Her father, John Slade, is the son of a Southampton builder, who set up his own public relations company in the 1970s [1]. Her mother, Sheila, is a teacher. John Slade became a Liberal Democrat member of Southampton Council and was installed as the 784th Mayor of the city on 17 May 2006, a few weeks before the start of the World Cup. A fellow councillor, Alec Samuels remarked of the new Mayor that he was Southampton's most famous because he was the father of a footballer's girlfriend. Melanie works in 'Claires Accessories' in West Quay Shopping Centre.[2].
[edit] Slade and Theo Walcott
Slade first met Theo Walcott (b.1989) when, prior to his joining Arsenal, he was contracted to Southampton football club. In May 2006 she was thrust into the limelight, and quickly became a favourite subject of British tabloid newspapers when, at the age of seventeen, Walcott was unexpectedly selected for the England World Cup squad by its coach Sven-Göran Eriksson. Walcott had neither played in the FA Premier League, nor had Eriksson seen him in a competitive match. Slade was present at Old Trafford, Manchester on 30 May 2006 when, as a substitute in a friendly match against Hungary, Walcott became the youngest ever player for England in a full international [3].
[edit] Slade and the media
In 2006 Slade was studying for A-levels at Itchen College, Southampton. In a pastiche of Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13¾ (1982) - "Theo's Diary - aged 17 and a quarter" - the Times (16 May 2006) attributed to its diarist the observation that "whereas Mel's studying psychology, biology and chemistry, Coleen thinks A level is the first floor of Topshop". (This was a reference to Coleen McLoughlin, girlfriend of Wayne Rooney.)
After Walcott's selection for the World Cup, Slade requested privacy from the media and said that she would not be taking any decisions about various commercial offers she had received until the World Cup was over [4]. In fact, despite the attention that they received, stories about her around this time were generally rather mundane. Aside from some mildly salacious photographs of her published by The Sun newspaper (19 May 2006), they included her involvement in a "Race for Life" organised by the charity Cancer Research UK [5]; Walcott's present to her of a Volkswagen "Beetle" car (a "love bug" with the number plate M444 T4M - "Theo for Melanie") [6]; and the possibility that she would take part in a post-World Cup television "reality" show, to be called WAGs Boutique, in which WAGs would compete to create and run clothing stores.
Slade was the subject also of a number of websites [7] and "image galleries" [8] on the Internet. Coverage was such that, by mid July 2006, about 50,000 references to her could be found via the Google search engine.
[edit] Famous for fifteen minutes?
The torrent of publicity dissipated once the English team had been eliminated from the World Cup (a tournament in which Theo Walcott did not in fact play) and it became a moot point as to whether, to borrow Andy Warhol's celebrated phrase, Slade had had her "fifteen minutes of fame". She resurfaced briefly in August 2006 when she was photographed with the lace of her lingerie strategically visible after passing her A-levels (e.g. Metro, 18 August 2006) and an interview with her and Walcott appeared in the celebrity magazine Hello! the following month (26 September 2006). In (December 2006), Slade appeared in her "first ever photoshoot" for Arena magazine.
