Episode 62: Claire Richards
Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Kat Rulach
4.8 • 527 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2022
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Claire Richards - or Claire from Steps as most of us know her - left school at 17 and within 2 months had signed a record deal. So began a hugely successful pop career, with Steps still at the top of their game in this, their 25th anniversary year. They recently finished an arena tour - where I was their support act and experienced for myself what incredible fans they have - almost like a giant, joyful family!
We talked about pre-performance nerves, how Claire manages to compartmentalise her work and homelife, and about how working makes her feel she comes home as a better mum to children Charlie and Daisy. We also talked about Claire's relationship with food and how she never wants her children to go through that. Plus we laughed about the ridiculousness of our jobs, with Claire winning on this occasion as she recently had to die on stage every night in War of the Worlds, in front of her husband played by Duncan from Blue dressed as a vicar! Beat that!!
Spinning Plates Podcast is Produced by Claire Jones
Post-production / engineered and edited by Richard Jones
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Sophia Lysbexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to |
| 0:09.6 | to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. |
| 0:14.4 | I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, |
| 0:20.4 | so I spin a few plates myself. |
| 0:21.6 | Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. |
| 0:27.6 | I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. |
| 0:31.6 | Welcome to spinning plates. |
| 0:34.6 | Hey, this is going to be one of those risky introses. This isn't going to work very well. |
| 0:40.3 | But I've left it really late. It's Sunday, so it's going to happen. Yes, Mickey. |
| 0:44.3 | Of course I can. Mickey likes being twisted up in the swing at the moment. He's discovered the joys of that. |
| 0:51.3 | So that's what we're doing now. So I'm moving other bits of |
| 0:54.9 | apparatus out the way. So it's not quite as dangerous as it might be. Oh, that's not going to work, |
| 1:01.3 | Mickey. All right, all right. My three-year-old has turned into my tiny boss man. I know, |
| 1:09.1 | Mickey. I know I haven't done that bit. Anyway, how are you? What's been going on |
| 1:12.9 | with you? I have, um, I'm about to just complete my final birthday party of April. This is number |
| 1:19.5 | four. And, um, I've had the same happy birthday balloons up since the first one, which was Richard's |
| 1:27.0 | way back on the sixth. We had mine on the 10th, which was Richards, Ray back on the 6th. |
| 1:28.5 | We had mine on the 10th. Sonny was 18 last Saturday on the 23rd and Ray was 10 on Monday 25th. |
| 1:34.8 | So we just had a sleepover last night with an extra seven kids around. |
| 1:41.0 | They're all leaving at the moment and quite exhausted actually, but in a happy way because it all went well. |
| 1:48.4 | And actually, Sunny and Ray haven't had birthday parties for two years. |
| 1:53.5 | So it's nice to get back to doing all that for them because, you know, it's a big deal when you're 10. |
... |
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