Rihanna requests "fast-food fest"

Rihanna's rider is a "fast-food fest".

The 21-year-old singer requested a fat-laden banquet ahead of her album launch show in London next Monday. Items she has asked for include six pizzas, six microwave lasagnes, 50 chicken drumsticks and 15 doughnuts.

"When it comes to the big US stars, we're used to getting ridiculously healthy requests," a source said. "It's almost a competition to see how boring and calorie-free they can be. But Rihanna was a breath of fresh air. There was none of this carb and gluten-free nonsense, just a total fast-food fest."

The rider totals 7,000 calories, with the star also requesting six portions of fried noodles in sauce, 10 large packets of crisps and assorted pots of dips.

Rihanna has admitted she is partial to fatty foods, insisting she can afford to eat them as she burns off so many calories performing her rigorous dance routines on stage.

She told the Daily Mirror newspaper: "Being on tour gets you in shape which is good considering how I eat pretty much whatever I can get my hands on. There's a lot of junk food because when you're on tour it's difficult to prepare meals. There's always noodles, a lot of microwave meals, endless chips and snacks and bad stuff. You perform for an hour and a half so you can work some of it off at least. But not all of it!"

Meanwhile, Rihanna has opened up about recording her new album Rated R. Much of the record is about the February night when her on/off boyfriend Chris Brown assaulted her in a car. He punched, choked and bit her, and she found the experience so hard to deal with she couldn't even begin work on the new album until May.

"I walked out the studio a few times just trying not to be in tears," she said. "I got to vent because I didn't really talk a lot. I didn't talk to a lot of people about anything I was feeling. I just did it on the record. I was tired of just being in the house and I just felt like I was wasting so much time and just being lackadaisical, so I just wanted to work again and we started recording."

Chris was sentenced to five years' probation and six months' community labour following the incident. He was also barred from contacting the singer for five years and told to attend domestic violence classes for 52 weeks.