Beverley Knight on whether stage performing or being a pop star is harder

The Wolverhampton pop singer turned West End star has had a glittering stage career in the last decade after making her name as a 1990s singer.

Beverley was discussing on Radio 4 the future of theatre and the boost celebrities like her can give a production. And she was in no doubt which was the hardest job, pop star or stage actress.

She said: "The appeal of theatre for me that I was coming full circle, I had an opportunity present itself 11 years ago and I grabbed it with both hands and luckily for me has not stopped rolling.

"Its good pay depending on what you are doing, however, it is way harder than being in the music industry. Where you have a rider, a team of people running around after you and you've got one thing to do, get on stage and sing.

"But theatre you are doing the same everyone else doing, it is real graft.

"That is why I have the upmost respect for those who do not have renumeration as me, my job is to be the shiny bauble who attracts people in but when we are there everyone is grafting, it is really hard work."

Beverley, who won an Olivier Award and is set to be the headline actress for Sister Act this Spring, has noticed how theatre audiences to her shows have drawn in a more racially and economically diverse audience.

She said: "The audiences are a lot more diverse, but the productions themselves have lent themselves to be a lot more diverse. The musical Memphis, which was about a white DJ and a up and coming black singer, and the blossoming of Rock n Roll in the 1950s, and the music.

"It ticked so many boxes from a marketing and PR point of view, you looked around the audience and it was a lot more diverse than the people who would go and see a Midsummer's Night Dream."

Writer and producer of 2:22 A Ghost Story, which is in Birmingham now and coming to Wolverhampton's Grand Theatre, Danny Robbins expressed his worry about the future of theatre.

He said: "I bought four tickets to a big show in the West End and it was the cost of a small holiday. Theatre is facing an existential crisis. We need a night at the theatre to be the same price as a meal out.

"We also need to make theatre as exciting as Netflix, and everything else the younger generation has grown up with."