WATCH: Celebrating the voice and remarkable songbook of Gladys Knight on tour

The show offers a celebration of one of the greatest voices of modern music – and it does so in a significant year. With Gladys Knight turning 80 next year, this year Knight is offering her final tour. Haley, who has seen her twice live, will capture the magic of a Gladys Knight performance.

“What makes her special obviously is that voice, that silkiness. She has gone from Motown to having a Bond theme and there are not many people that have had that versatility! But also I think very often you just don't realise how many songs that you know are actually her. She's done so many cover versions of songs and she just always makes them so much her own. Barbra Streisand did The Way We Were and Gladys did too. They are both brilliant but they're completely different and it's the same with songs that she has done which had been done by people like Bonnie Raitt and Dusty Springfield. So many times you hear a cover and you think it's just the same but Gladys Knight really brings something different to it. She has always been one of my favourite singers. I think you take your music influences from your parents and my mum was always a big fan of hers. She was always playing her records all the time and I think as a singer it's the voices that you grew up with that you tend to lean towards when you start singing yourself. People were starting to say that I sounded like Gladys Knight but actually it was my mum saying that I should perhaps bring more Gladys Knight songs in my repertoire because I was sounding like her. That was about 15 years ago and I didn't feel ready at the time so I just spent the time working towards it.”

The show itself is more like a concert than telling the story of Gladys Knight, but Haley is very happy to chat: “I'm very keen to get the audience reaction. I like to ask the audience what their favourite songs are or shout out ‘Is anyone in love?’ and you get the response. I like to get a good old chat going and a little bit of humour in there. The set itself is based on her last tour in 2018 but I also throw in a few old favourites as well”

Hayley, who saw Gladys Knight perform in Manchester and in Nottingham, started the show in 2019: “We launched it in September 2019 and we did a few months from September to March and then of course there was the lockdown. Everything shut down and it was just so sad because it had just started and we had the momentum and we had the feedback. It was just heart breaking. There was a really good mood going and then it had to stop.

“I worked in a supermarket for two years (during the pandemic). Just being able to clock on and clock off and not travel was weird but it was chaotic with all the queues and some of my musicians were the forgotten ones, the freelancers. But I worked in the supermarket stacking shelves in the middle of the night doing night shifts and some of the band were working for Iceland and some others were delivering for other supermarkets. We were all working for rival supermarkets but it was great to put my headphones on at two in the morning and stack the shelves and just be thinking about the show!”