Claire Richards’ backstage rider is “mostly wine”.
The 46-year-old singer – who has been a member of pop group Steps since its formation in 1997 alongside Faye Tozer, Ian ‘H’ Watkins, Lisa Scott-Lee and Lee Latchford-Evans – will be heading out on the road of the UK in October and November for her ‘Everybody Dance’ tour.
Claire has lifted the lid on what she and the rest of Steps have waiting for them backstage, and there is always plenty of alcohol on offer.
In an appearance on the ‘Table Manners’ podcast – which is hosted by musician Jessie Ware and her mother Lennie – she said: “Well, it’s mostly wine. There’s normally… it’s two bottles of prosecco, a couple of bottles of rose and white, we don’t have any red, and then it used to be a bottle of gin and some tonics for ‘H’ but now he has tequila.”
Looking ahead to her solo tour, the ‘Better Best Forgotten’ singer described the show as a “big old glitzy dance show” that will get her fans on their feet.
She said: “All hits from the ‘70s up until now of disco and dance.
“I mean, and it was just going to be a big old show, there’s dancers, I think they’re going to have, kind of, other performers and stuff as well and then I’m- I’m the singer. I’m the hired singer, which I’m really looking forward to, because it’s like, doing all the things I love without having to worry about all the other stuff.”
Claire also opened up on why Steps split in 2001, with her blaming “burn out”, “frictions” between the five members and an unrelenting work schedule which took its toll on everyone.
She explained: “I think ultimately, it’s probably just burn out, you know, there were frictions and there were just kind of things that I suppose happened that became massive, because we were so compressed all the time.
“When you were in a band back in the ‘90s, it was just work, work, work, work, work. There was no respite from it at all, I think the most time we ever got off was maybe two weeks of Christmas and that would have been it.
“The rest of the time someone’s sitting in an office in a record company doing the schedule, and not thinking about the human beings at the other end of it.”