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‘I was cancelled’: Beverley Knight on gay rights, race and her West End renaissance

As a chart-topping singer in the ultra-controlled pop landscape of the 00s, she refused to be sexy, spoke out about Aids and was staunchly pro-Labour. Now, she’s one of theatre’s biggest stars – and ready to get the Tories out

This month, she is reprising her role in Sister Actas the lead Deloris Van Cartier, where she will be supported by theGavin & Stacey writer and actor Ruth Jones and thesinger Lemar. It’s not often interviewing a successful singer that the conversation has to be pulled back from city planning (at one point, Knight reflects on the traffic around Birmingham’s Bullring), but she’s especially protective of her home town. In recent years, there has been a collective soul-searching about the treatment of pop stars: often young women thrust into the limelight, put up by a male-dominated industry to be picked apart by a misogynist press with little interest in their wellbeing.

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