01-05-2025
Claire Richards: ‘On my first big trip with Steps we were squished into economy by the loo'
The singer Claire Richards, 47, grew up in Hillingdon, Greater London. She is a member of Steps, the UK's most successful mixed-sex pop group of all time, and has also released two albums as a solo artist (My Wildest Dreams in 2019 and Euphoria, a covers album, in 2023). She met her husband, Reece, when he was a publicist for Steps' record company, before he retrained as an electrician. They live in Surrey with their children, Charlie, 17, and Daisy, 15.
In the Nineties, the glory days of pop, it was the norm to film music videos in incredible locations. We filmed When I Said Goodbye in Rome, zipping across from the Spanish Steps to the Trevi Fountain; the year before that we jetted off to Havana, Cuba to shoot The Last Thing on My Mind. Havana was such an interesting and visually striking place to record a video, and we spent a week there, driving around its colourful streets in big old American classic cars that were falling apart, taking silly photos on the beach …
• Read our full guide to Havana
In September 1997, Steps flew to Spain and filmed the video for 5,6,7,8 on a beach in Estepona. We all shared a big apartment in Malaga and spent a couple of evenings going out in Puerto Banus in Marbella. I'm not a big drinker, but having just turned 20, I got so drunk at the wrap party that the next day I had the worst hangover I've ever experienced. H [Ian 'H' Watkins] ended up dragging me out of bed 20 minutes before we had to leave for the airport; I felt so ill.
Flying long haul and going straight into work was a real travel lowlight from those days. The band's first big trip was to Singapore on a night flight in 1998. Faye [Tozer], Lisa [Scott-Lee] and I were squished into the rear economy seats by the toilet, with no recline. After a few days in Singapore we flew economy to Australia, landing at 6am; by 10am we were doing a photoshoot on the steps of Sydney Town Hall. We spent one week in Sydney and then Melbourne, doing promotion, and the jet lag was horrendous. For the duration of the trip I was wide awake all night and could barely speak because I was so tired. Our packed schedule meant we never had time to really explore. It was relentless.
Aged 17, just before joining my first band, TSD, I visited Tenerife with a friend. We stayed in a dodgy hotel, close to Los Cristianos. It was one of those places where you get given a free drink at the front of every club. It was dreadful. We only had £200 between us to cover our food and drink for a week and by the end we'd had a big argument and weren't speaking to each other. Needless to say, we are no longer friends.
Before initial rehearsals for Steps began, when I was 19, my parents booked us all on a package holiday to the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean — a far cry from some of the caravan parks in France we visited when I was young. This was about 28 years ago, when the country wasn't as developed as a tourist destination. The first hotel we went to was awful; the buffet was outside and everything was covered in flies. My mum refused to stay there and fortunately we were moved to a beautiful hotel, where my sister and I felt so grown-up, going to the in-house nightclub inside the hotel while our parents had dinner. It was the perfect holiday just before my life went crazy.
After Steps got back together and toured the world in 2018, I treated the family to a couple of nights at the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur to explore the city; we then flew to Langkawi and stayed in an incredible villa at the Four Seasons there, with a hammock out the front. Both hotels were spectacular and our base in the cooler Langkawi was particularly idyllic after the humidity of Kuala Lumpur. We were visited by a small monkey called Michael who came for an apple every day.
• 10 of the best islands in Malaysia
Escape rooms are an obsession of mine, and we did two when we were in New York a few years ago. I'm trying to tick them off around the world — so far I've done Paris, Bournemouth, Windsor, San Francisco — and the best ones are in America. I'm normally the one in the corner shouting at everybody. I'm quite competitive, really. Here & Now — The Steps Musical is touring the UK and Ireland from August 2025 through to May 2026 (
