Congratulations on your pregnancy. Have you been singing to your bump?
Sort of inadvertently, because I’m back at Les Mis so by osmosis, she’s getting Boublil and Schönberg every night. I’m hoping she comes out waving a red flag and marching as soon as she walks. I haven’t sort of sat and sung to her, but I sing all the time and everything’s for her now.
You’re performing your biggest solo concert to date, at the London Palladium. How do you put a set list together?
It depends on whether you’re working for someone or for yourself. You have to do what other people want a lot of the time, which is totally fine – most of the stuff I’m asked to do is from my catalogue and I love it. Only one or two songs fill me with dread if I see them on a requests sheet. And to be honest, I always get to them and they’re fine anyway. But putting a show like this together is completely different because it’s about me and my life. The concert is based on ideas we had last year for my Glastonbury set where it was very much music to music, quick introductions, keep it moving. That was right for that gig but this time I am exploring what these songs mean and who I am now. I’m going to talk to the audience in a different way to how I have before. I’ve shied away from singing more than one song from the same show in the past. But I’m playing the London Palladium while carrying my daughter. And Jenna in Waitress goes through everything while carrying her child. I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to sing songs that really relate to what’s going on so there will definitely be more than one song from Waitress.
