“Ooh, no, I don’t think I can! Take That? No? Gina G? I don’t know why she springs to mind! [Laughs] I remember doing Top of the Pops and she was on the stage over from me in a sparkling dress and I remember thinking, ‘Maybe I should wear sparkles!’. Those random things that go through your mind just before you’re about to sing live! Then, I concluded, ‘No, I’ll stick with the PVC I was currently wearing!’”.
WRONG. Among others, you introduced (deep breath!) Enya, Madonna, Tina Turner, Kanana, The Beautiful South, Coolio, EastEnders heartthrob-turned-singer Sean Maguire, Bryan Adams and Shola Ama.
Alas, not 1996’s UK Eurovision hopeful Gina G!
“[Laughs] I could have probably just guessed one of those! I remember being excited by Coolio, because I loved American hip-hop and R&B.”
You mentioned Take That, whom Eternal supported on tour in the ‘90s…
“We toured for about four months. All the boys were great. I watched their show every night to the point that if one of them was sick, I could have stepped in! I still see Gaz [Barlow] frequently, and they were always inclusive of us. We worried that girls would hate us, because Take That’s audience was hugely female-led and adored them. But their audience bought into us because we were tomboys – we looked more like boys than the boys on that tour!”
You left Eternal on 18 July 1995; one day earlier, Robbie Williams announced his intention to quit Take That. Ever talk about the pressures you were facing when you toured together?
“We both knew that we were struggling within our bands, though we never sat down and said, ‘I’m going to leave on this day’. It was apparent that we weren’t as well-gelled and sitting comfortably within our bands, and we knew we weren’t massively happy. During that time, he was someone I could be open and honest with and talk to. Out of all of them, I did talk to Rob the most about the band situation purely because he understood where I was coming from.”
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