RS: With your touring, what's the biggest crowd you've played to in the UK and Europe?
Lara: Probably about twenty thousand people in the big open-air sort of things. We did a lot of TV and stuff and it was strange because the track in the UK seemed to grow after it had been released, so it started getting loads more airtime and we started doing more performances and things. Hopefully with Touch Me as well there will be loads more to do, because it's been lots of fun.
RS: I follow the UK and sometimes a club record will come out, it will do OK, and then like six months later it will come out again and it'll be huge.
Lara: Oh right, it's a bit of a funny one in the UK. I mean it works so differently here, but yes, that seems to be how it goes sometimes.
RS: What's your favorite remix of the song?
Lara: You know, my favorite version of it is really the original mix because I'm not really as much into the remixes as I was the original song. That sounds really bad doesn't it, but I prefer just the extended mix of the original.
RS: When you perform the song live, do you ever sing the original "Oh Sheila" vocals?
Lara: No I don't, because it's so different, isn't it? When I first recorded it I hadn't heard the original before we turned it into what it is now. When I heard it I was like oh my God, it's just nothing like it, and you wouldn't really connect the two. But no, I never sing the original vocals.
RS: OK. I'm going to ask you a really personal question. In researching you and your music, I found some stuff where you had a hip operation when you were really young.
Lara: Yes, that got a little bit overblown in the UK press. What had actually happened was when I was born I didn't have a left hip - the socket and the joint, they hadn't formed properly. They'd got dislocated really early and then no one discovered it until I was like two years old. So instead of it being easy to correct and having an operation, they put me in plaster casts from just under my arms right to the tips of my toes, and I was sort of just laid out on these splints in plaster cast for a year and a half. Luckily enough, my hip then forged in, but they said I'd never dance or anything like that. But I do dance, so I proved them wrong.
RS: Well that goes back to you being a hard worker again.
Lara: Yes, I guess so. When I was five, I said oh mum, I want to do ballet, and my mum was like oh, I don't think you really can. But the surgeon said it was cool to do that and we just worked it out. I haven't had any problems with that, touch wood, but it's not like I was born with like no legs or anything, it was just a bit exaggerated.
RS: Those British press people.
Lara: I know, they always seem to come out with anything don't they.
RS: Is there anything you want to say to all the people out there?
Lara: Basically that I'm really, really grateful that people are getting into the track and that the stations are playing it. It's been really surprising and we're very, very grateful indeed. Keep your ears open and you will hear more from me and Angel City.
