Self Esteem and the comforts of home cooking

As the singer branded as Self Esteem, she isn’t afraid of tackling big issues like misogyny, domestic violence and the image some women feel they have to portray to make it in showbusiness.

The multi-issue campaigner pops up on long-running West End stage shows and on TV too.

Yet Rebecca, from Anston, has lifted the lid on some surprisingly traditional tastes when it comes to cuisine.

She may be able to afford fine dining and fancy restaurants these days, but she retains a soft spot for comfort food and harbours great memories of her mum and dad’s grub, back home in Rotherham.

In a podcast re-issued by the Guardian newspaper recently, the 37-year-old was invited to reveal what food she had enjoyed on her journey from South Yorkshire to the red carpet at The Brits.

She was interviewed in the front room of another "northern woman eating carb” Grace Dent, better known as the Guardian’s restaurant critic.

Grace wanted to know what a "pop diva eats when she is home alone”.

Rebecca’s number one pick was a "cheese toastie, with white onion, on white bread with salad cream as a sort of dipping sauce."

The entertainer explained she could "eat a raw onion like an apple” and confessed her dream was to have a buffet all on her own.

Asked what food was like back in Rotherham, when she was growing up, Rebecca recalled how the family all sat down together at the table as soon as her dad got home from work.

Her parents weren’t strict but she had a structured upbringing and that included dinner time, she noted.

“There was a lot of stew, good hearty British stuff...sometimes there would be fish fingers chips and beans...I loved that, there isn’t anything much more delicious than that I don't think.”

Tuesdays were Brownie days and her dad would give her "toast and honey in front of the telly...a treat” before sending her off.

She was introduced to tuna and sweetcorn pasta bake at home, but late on in her development.

Eating chicken and mushroom pizza after school was another highlight.

That was now a go-to dish when Rebecca is hung over: "There is no bounds to how much pasta I can eat,” said the one time South Yorkshire Ladies cricket player, Wales High School pupil and supply teacher.

Rebecca, who produced the album Prioritise Pleasure, had a guilty pleasure of her own when she was on the road with band mates.

The singer, whose lyrics include the words "My stomach and heart never align”, likes to visit McDonalds, where she treats herself to a nugget meal and cheese burger.