Strictly between you and me, there’s something about Rachel Stevens that has never quite added up. Normally, if I let slip to my colleagues that I am about to interview a woman who has consistently featured as one of the sexiest women on the planet in every poll that measures such matters, there’s usually a sense of awe and envy.

But with Stevens the opposite is the case. Bizarrely, many people would happily avoid her company. After meeting her, one journalist described the experience as ‘the longest hour of my life – it was like attempting to interview a wardrobe’.

And it wasn’t just the press. DJ Chris Moyles once commented, ‘I know she’s meant to be really fit but she’s really boring.’ Scissor Sisters vocalist Ana Matronic went even further, remarking, ‘Rachel Stevens has all the personality of a slice of toast.’

Part of the problem has always been that she often struggled to live up to her billing as S Club 7’s resident sexpot. She sold 16 million records with the band between 1999 and 2003, before going on to record two solo albums. After which she more or less disappeared from view. Now, after three years in the showbiz wilderness, she’s back as a contestant in Strictly Come Dancing.

Despite her reputation, she couldn’t be more exuberant at today’s shoot, taking to the role of an atomic pin-up starlet like she was born to it. In fact, over a morning together, Stevens turns out to be the very opposite of what I’d been led to expect as she talks openly and passionately about her lonely childhood, her parents’ divorce, her estrangement from her father, her stint in therapy and her love-hate relationship with fame. (more…)