Claire Richards - I Wish I'd Known Big Bums Would End Up Fashionable!

Singer Claire Richards tells Now about ‘stepping’ into the spotlight as a solo artist and her Strictly ambitions.

- Hayley Minn

It’s been 20 years since pop group Steps burst on to the music scene, and now band favourite Claire Richards is finally going it alone with the release of her debut solo album.

We meet Claire, 41, at The Big London Bake, where the amateur baker is judging our cakes. Pressure! But, while her hobby makes Claire – who has son Charlie, 11, and eight-year-old daughter Daisy with husband Reece Hill – the perfect mum, she insists that’s where it ends. In fact, the singer confesses that spending so much of her late teens and early 20s in a band meant she never really learnt how to do housework. Here, Claire talks about what it’s like going solo and why she’d love to follow in bandmate Faye Tozer’s Strictly footsteps...

Hi, Claire! Has it felt lonely singing onstage without your Steps bandmates?