They could have been pop’s golden couple; if it weren’t for the fact Claire was married to first husband and Steps dancer Mark Webb.
Claire's bandmate Lee Latchford-Evans had tipped her off that Dane had once had a bit of a thing for her, but it was many years later after a wedding (not her own... that would have been awkward) that Claire went for it, despite being married.
“Years before he’d told Lee that he fancied me, but nothing came of it because he was dating Katie Price,” Claire wrote in her autobiography, All Of Me.
“At the end of the night I got a cab back to the hotel with Dane, and we both said goodnight and went our separate ways. When I got back to my room I wasn’t ready for the night to end, so I decided to knock on Dane’s door and ask him if he could help me undo my dress! I fancied him a bit and I was up for a flirt.
“We chatted for ages then he started kissing me and we ended up having a bit of a fumble, although we didn’t have sex.
“I woke up in his bed fully clothed the next morning and had to do the walk of shame.
“I didn’t want to leave his room wearing the same outfit I’d worn to the wedding because I knew that would look bad, so I wrapped a big towel around me, tucking my dress straps underneath to hide them, so it looked like I’d just popped into his room to borrow something. I gave Dane a lift back to London that day and as I dropped him off I said to him, ‘I’m married; I can’t do this.’
“‘I think that’s a real shame,’ he replied. ‘We could have given it a go.’
“When I got home, Mark was there. I put what happened with Dane to the back of my mind and tried again to make our marriage work — but it still wasn’t right.”
Claire, now 34, knew things with Mark weren’t working and it eventually drove her into a deep depression and she was prescribed medication to help her cope.
It was only when she was reunited with Reece, Steps' former publicity manager who Claire had been involved with when she was 20, that she found true love and happiness.
She married Reece, who is now an electrician, in 2008, and they have two kids — Charlie, four, and two-year-old Daisy.