Kylie Queen of the World Read online

  ‘My one regret about meeting him is that I said the word “penis”,’ she revealed. ‘We were talking about Sir Les Patterson and I said, “Oh I did a show with Sir Les and we sang ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’ but he got his penis out in the middle of the song and started chasing me around the stage.” I was telling Charles this whole story and he was really laughing. He found it genuinely funny. It was only the next day I woke up and thought, Oh my God, I said “penis” to a prince!’

  All told, 2000 had been a very, very good year, but the best was yet to come. The twenty-seventh Olympic Games, to be staged in Sydney in September, effectively turned out to be Kylie’s coronation as the Princess of Pop. And she revelled in it. It was a monumentally star-studded occasion, with a pre-split Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in attendance, alongside Leonardo diCaprio, Calista Flockhart, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Paul Hogan, Elle Macpherson, Chelsea Clinton, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, others too numerous to mention – and Kylie Minogue.

  Kylie was the star of the show. She performed at the paralympics and the opening and closing ceremony of the main attraction to 180,000 in the stadium, her biggest live audience ever, and four billion worldwide. Kylie’s entrance was as spectacular as everything else about the day: she was borne on to the stage on a giant surfboard held aloft by footballers.

  Dressed in the manner of a Las Vegas showgirl, with a bright pink outfit topped by a pink feather head-dress, she performed ‘Spinning Around’, ‘Celebration’, ‘On A Night Like This’ and ‘Dancing Queen’, all of which received rapturous applause from the audience. ‘The most incredible moment had to be performing at the closing ceremony of the Olympics in Sydney,’ she wrote in her GQ piece. ‘I was so desperate to be involved in the games because I was just so proud that they were being held in my country.

  ‘Technically it could have been a nightmare. I was carried on to the stage on a surfboard which was held aloft by Australian footballers – not dancers, who know how to do that sort of thing, but Australian footballers – so I was very nervous. But once I was on stage it was unbelievable. It’s actually very hard for me to convey in words what it was like. I felt like I was in the middle of some weird special effect when you’re dragged out of the dimension you’re in. It was just so intense. And funny. There were drag queens everywhere, pawns on bicycles, Elle Macpherson walking out on this massive camera lens … it was just perfect. The whole stadium was just dazzling. For a girl who loves anything that sparkles it was just magical.’

  And Kylie finished off with a look back at her new-found happiness. ‘The one lesson this year has taught me is that it’s OK to be many things,’ she wrote. ‘I got lost for a while back there. I couldn’t be everything I wanted to be so I was just being one side of myself. Now I’m happy with whoever I am on any given day. Come on, I’m a Gemini – you’re always dealing with at least two people! So if I’ve learned something of value – it’s how to be myself.’

  Rather touchingly, Kylie made a new friend at the Olympics: Nikki Webster, who was just 13 when she too performed to the vast crowd. Nikki, who lives in Sydney, is now playing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz: she and Kylie have kept in touch.

  ‘It all started when we were to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge together at the time of the Olympics,’ recalled Nikki. ‘We both got really upset when it was cancelled because of rain. So a group of us went out to dinner. We then did the climb, which we both really loved, and from there we have just kept in contact, which is great. It was so amazing to meet her. She has been one of my idols ever since I was little so for her to be so nice and down to earth was great. “Locomotion” was one of the first songs I ever sang.

  ‘When we first met she asked me a lot about what I wanted to do in my career. She kept e-mailing me and asking me how I was getting along.

  ‘We chat about all different things. When I was doing my new album she asked how it was going. Sometimes Kylie and James e-mail me together. Kylie and I have funny little names for each other – little code names. My e-mail name is “tiny star” and she will write “to my little chick”. Kylie is just such a beautiful person and really helpful. She told me if I ever needed any help she was on the other end of the phone and would always be there.

  ‘It was great to have someone who is so successful looking out for me when I was starting my career. I was speaking to her parents at a charity ball and they said that Kylie was interested in me because I am so young and she is trying to look after my rights. Kylie and James are going very well. She hasn’t asked me to be a bridesmaid – but it would be fun.’ Sadly, it was not to be. Kylie and James were to break up in highly acrimonious circumstances.

  12

  We Are Family

  I spend all day every day working towards being famous

  DANNNII MINOGUE

  If there has been one constant about Kylie’s Minogue’s life, it is the endless speculation about her relationship with her younger sister Dannii. It was Dannii, of course, who first made it to the big time in Australia, but in the intervening years, she has been well and truly eclipsed by her older sister Kylie. And yet the parallels in their lives are there for all to see: both started on Australian soaps, both then went on to forge musical careers for themselves and both have had turbulent love lives. They both now live in London; Dannii was for a time managed by Terry Blamey, who is Kylie’s manager; they both have their own clothing range; and they are both extremely ambitious.

  To cap it all, the physical resemblance is strong: both are petite with good bone structure and wide mouths. The main difference these days is hair colour – Dannii’s brunette to Kylie’s blonde – although some uncharitable commentators have remarked that Dannii’s resemblance to Kylie is a good deal stronger than it was 10 years ago, when Dannii weighed a lot more than she does now. There were also rumours, always fiercely denied, that in 1996 Dannii had breast implants, boosting her figure from 34B to 36D.

  ‘I think people are fascinated talking about it,’ snapped Dannii to an interviewer when the subject came up some years later. ‘The thing I do find weird is being asked about it. If the situation were reversed I wouldn’t be asking you anything about your penis or what you do with it. When you’re doing a lot of photo sessions you see lots of images of yourself and get bored of the way you look – that’s why I change my hair colour a lot. Although I once dyed my hair red just for a birthday party, I was told it would wash straight out – of course it didn’t and I was a permanently red colour, which I absolutely hated.’

  The real difference between the two sisters is temperament. Dannii is wild, upfront and confrontational; Kylie is polite, reserved and, when she can, avoids fights. The pair say they are good friends and yet the doubts linger on: can there really be no rivalry between them? Wasn’t it galling for Kylie to see her little sister achieve stardom before she did? And didn’t Dannii resent being so comprehensively overtaken by her big sis? The answer to both of those questions would certainly be yes in the vast majority of families – and yet the sisters firmly deny that anything is or ever has been amiss between the two of them. All, according to the two girls, is sisterly bliss.

  Of course, as Kylie herself has never forgotten, Dannielle Jane Minogue was originally the star in the family and she also beat Kylie in the race to the altar, although her marriage didn’t last. She joined The Sullivans aged seven – after Kylie had had a role in the programme – went on to present Young Talent Time and ended up in the soap Home and Away as Emma, all before turning up in London in 1991 to promote her single ‘Love and Kisses’. She loved Young Talent Time. ‘There was a talent school attached to it,’ she recalls. ‘Lots of kids went with their pushy mothers, hoping to get them on stage. I just went because I loved the classes, the singing and dancing, and that’s what got me the job in the end.’ Demonstrating the determination that the Minogue girls have shown throughout their lives, she worked on it six days a week. ‘When I did that show it was Kylie who was trying to live down being in my sh
adow,’ Dannii once remarked. ‘In Australia, people know who I am and I am secure in my identity. We’re sisters, we love each other, we get along great, so it is natural I should be happy for her.’

  And though Dannii has not matched Kylie in terms of success since then, she’s certainly been busy: she appeared in the film Secrets, she’s been a TV presenter for the Disney Channel and The Big Breakfast, she’s designed her own range of bikinis, appeared in the biggest selling calendar of 1997, taken the parts of Rizzo in the musical Grease, Lady Macbeth in the Scottish play and Esmerelda in Notre Dame de Paris and between all this managed to fit in a 17-month-long marriage to fellow Home and Away star Julian McMahon, son of the former Australian prime minister Sir William McMahon, with whom she tied the knot when she was just 22. Confused? We’ve hardly started. Dannii has been fiercely ambitious practically from the moment she crawled from the cradle: ‘I was seven when I heard a record for the first time and I thought Wow, that’s what I want to do,’ she once revealed.

  She also has her own website, www.dannii.com, ‘the website for all your Dannii needs, which Dannii herself helps to write.’ Be sure, however, to remember the second ‘i’ if you want to visit it – ‘Because there’s a famous porn site called www.danni.com, and you don’t want to go spelling it wrong,’ explains the youngest Minogue. ‘Apparently she gets more hits than any other porn site and it may just be people looking for me.’

  All told it’s not surprising that Dannii gets irritated by the constant comparisons with her big sister: ‘I don’t like being pigeonholed into one thing,’ she says. ‘I like doing a mixture of things and not getting bored. I’ve done all these things for 20 years. I’d never like to be asked to choose just one to call my career. I’m a workaholic and a control freak.’ That’s not all she is, according to the writer John Walsh:

  ‘Ever since she was seven, she’s been performing like billyo,’ he wrote, ‘unceasingly, unstoppably – acting, singing, dancing, writing, going blonde, going brunette, slimming down, fronting up, being measured against her big sister Kylie, transforming herself in to a lads’ mag cover girl sex pot along the lines of the world’s most downloaded woman, even getting her kit off for Australian Playboy – until, ironically, she is now known more for being an unclassifiable, polymorphous celeb than for anything more specific.’

  The real problem, according to friends of the family, stems back to that very early audition for The Sullivans – the audition that was meant only for Dannii, until Kylie tagged along too. Kylie is open about what happened, as related in Chapter One. ‘Danielle had been spotted in a shop by someone who arranged for her to try out for The Sullivans,’ she said in an interview given just after she became famous. ‘Mum said I’d have to go along, too or none of us were going. We all went off to the studio and I got the part intended for Danielle.’

  It was all rather unfortunate – for Dannii, at least. Dannii, of course, joined the show later and for some time overtook her older sister in the fame stakes. But when Kylie found success with Neighbours, old wounds were reopened and Dannii made her feelings quite plain. ‘Danielle has never forgiven Kylie for stealing the part which would have brought her real acting stardom,’ said a family friend a couple of years after Kylie hit the big time. ‘Instead she was left in limbo year after year as a variety starlet.’ Kylie herself added at the time, ‘I’d rather not talk about my relationship with Danielle.’ Dannii didn’t help matters when she announced she never watched Neighbours –‘I just don’t have the time.’

  By 1990, the sisters had sorted things out considerably, with Dannii reflecting on their relationship then and now. ‘Kylie and I fought a lot when we were younger,’ she admitted. ‘We shared a room and divided it with a piece of string directly down the middle. All her things were on one side and all mine on the other. She couldn’t come on to my side and I couldn’t go on to hers or there would be a lot of trouble. In many ways it was very difficult sharing a room with her and we often got on each other’s nerves.

  ‘But I also looked up to her a lot. I desperately wanted to be involved with her friends because they were so hip and groovy. Yet she’d say, “No, you can’t muck around with us, go away!” Her music is bubble gum pop – you can’t read any more in to it. It’s not what I’d want to do, though. Kids love her music and it’s fun, but I wouldn’t want to put it on and play it all the time.’ But over time the sisters had become close, Dannii revealed. ‘Kylie’s always there for me if I want to pour my heart out.’

  And as for that other potential area of rivalry, there was no problem. ‘Kylie and I have never been rivals over boyfriends, thank goodness,’ Dannii says. ‘We’ve never been around the same boys except Jason Donovan. I’ve known him since I was 15 but have never fancied him. He’s just a close friend of mine.’

  It didn’t help that the two have been involved in so many similar projects. Even if the girls didn’t want to compare themselves to each other, they were given no choice by the rest of the industry, which did. Just as Kylie became known to the British public through one Australian soap opera, her little sister did exactly the same with another: Home and Away. The soap’s bosses drew the parallel just in case anyone was in any doubt as to Dannii’s role on the show: ‘It’s make-or-break time,’ said a cheery insider on the show following the news that Dannii had been signed up. ‘We’re banking on Dannii to wow you Poms, just like Kylie did in Neighbours.’ It is a mark of how complex the sisters’ relationship is, incidentally, that there are rumours that Dannii almost turned down the part of the wild punkette Emma for fear of upsetting her sister. Kylie, according to the gossip at the time, was unbothered. ‘The world is big enough for two Minogues,’ was all Dannii would say.

  As it happened, this was the year Kylie was starring in The Delinquents – not her finest hour and not really a time at which she would relish comparisons being made. There was, however, no avoiding them. The powers that be behind Home and Away were milking the Minogue name for all it was worth, and were only too happy to come up with other points of reference in case anyone else might have missed them. ‘Kylie Minogue’s little sister Dannii is all set to show the Aussie superstar a fling or two with her first steamy sex romps – described as some of the hottest scenes shown on TV,’ drooled one writer.

  ‘Dannii, 18, will set screens alight in the no-holds-barred soap Home and Away where she plays a love-hungry man-stealer. Her frank beach love-making with heart-throb teen star Matt Stevenson as Adam will make Kylie’s exploits in her raunchy film Delinquents [sic] look like “kids’ stuff” according to producers of the hit soap.’

  And so it went on, with Matt dragged in to talk about the plot and the producers yet again highlighting the relationship between the girls when they added, ‘Dannii is very adult in her approach to acting and really sizzles in the beach scenes with Matt.’ It would have caused a strain between the closest of siblings and given that Kylie and Dannii had been competing for the same parts pretty much since crawling out of the cradle, one can only imagine the effect it would have had on the two.

  And there were all sorts of other crossovers. Dannii’s first boyfriend was Paul Goldman, a video director who used to work with Jason Donovan. For some time they shared a manager, Terry Blamey. Like Kylie, Dannii’s made movies and records and then there was that appearance in Grease – the musical that so inspired her sister. Everywhere Dannii went – with the exception of matrimony and musicals – Kylie had been before. Who could blame them for feeling a little tense?

  The sisters, however, were clearly beginning to realise that the repeated talk of rivalry was damaging to both of them – after all, it’s very uncool to be portrayed as being jealous of anyone, especially your own flesh and blood – and were finally trying to mount some form of damage control. It might also have occurred to Dannii that the constant comparisons to Kylie could well backfire on her – as indeed they probably have done in the longer term – and so a new image of the two – fond of each other and yet entirely independ
ent – began to emerge.

  Dannii was also beginning to discover what it was like to live in Kylie’s shadow rather than the other way round. ‘I’ve never been jealous of Kylie’s success,’ she said firmly, when Kylie was in her first flush of fame. ‘I think what has happened to her is great – it couldn’t have been planned better. She’s only 21 but she’s done so much. Everything’s been perfect for her. No, I don’t envy her, although I must admit I’d like to do something like her latest film – that looks really fun.’

  Dannii also began to face accusations that she was only getting attention because she was a Minogue. ‘I could have done what I’m doing without Kylie,’ she stated for the record. ‘And I don’t want to go the same way she’s going. She’s never sat down with me and said, “Dannii you should do this”, or, “You shouldn’t do that.” If I asked her she’d give me advice, in the same way that I’d give her advice if she asked me for any. But Kylie has given me a few tips on acting. A lot of people may try to use me but I talked all this over with my parents and we picked a good manager who looks after Kylie, too.’

  Dannii certainly realised that her role in Home and Away represented a good opportunity for her and, famous sister or no, that it would have been madness to mess it up. That Minogue professionalism went into full swing and Dannii leapt in to her new role with gusto. ‘Home and Away was originally supposed to be just a 13-week run, which turned into a year,’ she revealed after leaving the soap. ‘The show was gruelling, producing two and a half hours of TV a week. I went in the dark and came back in the dark, up at 4 a.m. and back at 9 p.m., then I’d have to learn the next day’s lines.’ And make no mistake – she came through like a pro.