Kylie Queen of the World Read online

  Nor did this indifference show any signs of abating. Producers, writers, actors and directors did their best, but to no avail: they simply could not generate interest in their new programme. Finally, Channel Seven, which broadcast the soap, pulled the plug after just 170 episodes. Neighbours was a busted flush.

  Except that it wasn’t. Most of the people connected with the programme had assumed that that would be it, but they were wrong. Producer Ian Holmes retained faith in his new concoction and got in touch with a different broadcaster, Channel Ten, to offer the show to them. The channel took it on – making Neighbours the first show on Australian television to be dumped by one channel and taken up by another – while Grundy decided to tweak its new creation, getting rid of some characters that were not quite right and introducing a couple of younger ones, such as Charlene – originally brought in just for a few weeks as a foil to fellow newcomer Scott. Kylie landed the role of Charlene, while Jason Donovan was cast as Scott.

  But still the show didn’t take off and, according to the website, it was only then that someone realised what the really fundamental problem was: the programme was set in Melbourne, so viewers in Sydney weren’t tuning in. There is great rivalry between the two cities and it was generally felt that Sydney made a point of being indifferent to its upstart sibling, hence the lack of interest in the show. Channel Ten, having recognised the problem, acted fast: it spent AUS$500,000 on promotion, flying a cast member to Sydney every weekend to make personal appearances and sponsoring a ‘Neighbour of the Year’ competition in which the winner won a colour TV. The ploy worked. Ratings began to climb and the show began to attract interest from abroad – including the UK.

  Neighbours was first shown on British television on 27 October 1986, when it was aired by the BBC in the morning and at lunchtime. As in Australia, there was initially only casual interest from the viewing public. When the school holidays began, though, it was a different matter: children and teenagers alike latched on to the new show and did not give up on it when they were sent back to school. Back in term time they watched at lunchtime and even skipped lessons to get their daily quota of soap, until one schoolgirl had a word with her father and suggested Neighbours be moved to a new slot in the late afternoon when everyone had come home from school. The schoolgirl in question was Alison Grade, her father was Michael Grade, then the BBC’s head of programming and Michael very sensibly took his daughter’s advice. The programme was moved to 5.35 p.m., it went on to attract audiences of up to 16 million in its heyday and – in an unrelated move – Alison Grade went on to get a job with Thames Television, Grundy’s sister company. In a rare example of universal harmony in the cutthroat world of television, everyone was pleased and no one – as yet, that is – had anything to lose from the move.

  David Wood was certainly happy for his girlfriend, who had auditioned successfully for the part of Charlene. ‘Getting the part was everything she ever wanted. I was delighted for her,’ he recalled in 1989. ‘She’d had disappointments before. No one wanted to know when she tried to release a single before Neighbours – but she soldiered on.’

  It was while working on Neighbours that Kylie again encountered her old friend Jason Donovan: in fact, her very first scene had her punching his character, Scott. Charlene herself was very different from Kylie. Lenny, as the character preferred to be known, was a tomboy who left school at the earliest possible opportunity to become an apprentice mechanic. Her normal attire was khaki overalls but that was the full extent of her rebellion – her mum refused to let her live with Scott, and so ultimately, in a prelude to her leaving the series a couple of years later, Charlene married him and moved to Brisbane, where they have now settled down with their son Daniel. In fiction, if not in life, the couple were allowed to live happily ever after.

  The wedding, filmed in July 1987, marked a high spot for the show. It attracted a record number of viewers all over the world and intensified speculation that Kylie and Jason were a couple in real life as well as on screen. ‘It was a really tiring day,’ said Kylie of the now-legendary TV wedding. ‘I must have walked up and down that aisle 20 times while we were trying to capture the right mood. I’m sure it made a beautiful scene but for me at the time, I had to think of it as a day’s work. It was really weird with the wedding. I’d have people coming up to me thinking I was really getting married. They were so excited and their whole lives seemed to be revolving around it. People look up to you so much and I stop and think: Why? I’m just a normal person and it’s quite frightening in a way that they’re all watching everything that you do.’

  Even before the wedding, though, the show’s popularity had soared sky high, as did that of its diminutive star. At the 1987 Logies, the Australian television equivalent of the Oscars, Kylie was given the award of television’s most popular actress. She was 18. ‘When it was announced I just went in to shock,’ she said at the time. ‘I certainly don’t remember seeing anyone in the room while I was on stage. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d win. I just wish I’d been better prepared. I was so nervous and really excited at the time and I forgot to thank all the people on the show. I am really grateful for what I am doing,’ she continued. ‘I am really lucky, going from school to a full-time job like this in a show which is so popular. It wasn’t until later, when somebody asked me what Logie I’d won and I actually had to say it – Most Popular Actress – that I realised how important it was to me.’

  Kylie had gone from being Dannii’s Minogue’s older sister to an international star in her own right in just a couple of years and she was overwhelmed by her sudden success. Intensive interest in her was building up; for some reason, even back then, Kylie dominated the programme whenever she appeared on screen. People related to her girl-next-door persona and that enormous smile, with the result that she was mobbed wherever she went. And despite her earlier ambitions, Kylie really was taken aback by her immediate triumph as an actress. ‘You have to be lucky to go straight from school into a job which makes you famous throughout the world,’ she said at the time. ‘My face fitted the part and everything took off from there. And although there is a bit of me in Charlene, I don’t fight with my folks the way she does.’

  If anything, the programme was even more popular in Britain than it was in Australia. Crowds went wild when the stars began to visit London, as the Australian brigade discovered on a visit to Britain’s capital to attend the SOS (Show Organisation for Spastics) awards in 1988. Neighbours was voted the best show by the under-16s, while Kylie picked up the award for favourite female personality. Neighbours cast member Geoff Payne, who played Clive in the soap, gave voice to the sentiments all the cast were feeling when he said: ‘I think we feel more at home here and more welcome than we do in Australia.’

  But what exactly was it about this harmless little programme that struck such a chord with people worldwide? Soap operas come and soap operas go, but very few have the lasting power of this innocuous little Australian concoction, let alone its international appeal. Alan Dale, who played Jim Robinson, had one answer: ‘We deal with real issues,’ he argued. ‘If people had to put up with the crap your characters are faced with in British soaps like EastEnders, they’d commit suicide.’

  Undoubtedly true, but there were more universal issues at play, as well, not least of which was familiarity. ‘One of the great appeals of soap operas is that they explore common human situations,’ observed social psychologist Dr Maryon Tysoe at the time. ‘I’m not talking about Dallas and Dynasty, which shifted into fantasy. Soaps such as Coronation Street, EastEnders and Neighbours examine possible ways out of familiar situations and methods of dealing with things. Everyone is an amateur psychologist and likes to imagine how they would feel in such circumstances. If you watch something for long enough, you get to know a character’s history and become intrigued about what is going to happen.’

  Elaine Smith, the Scottish-born actress who played Daphne, had other ideas about why the show had proved so successful, not least of which
was the fact that it portrayed a perfection rarely to be found in real life. ‘The wonderful thing about Neighbours is that it’s always sunny,’ she argued. ‘When people open their fridges they are always full. And people like the fact that you can have an accountant, a mechanic and an executive living in the same street.’

  Albert Moran, lecturer in media studies at Griffith University, Brisbane, had yet another theory about the Neighbours phenomenon. ‘The show’s popularity,’ he said, ‘stems from the fact that it allows us to take a legitimised interest in gossip and in our neighbours. Because it is regular, it becomes as satisfying as the news.’

  But perhaps the people who came closest to the truth – in their analysis of soaps generally, rather than Neighbours specifically – are sociologists Laurie Taylor and Bob Mullan, who identify in their book Uninvited Guests something they call the echo effect, meaning that soaps mirror the viewers’ own experiences. ‘Episodes recall biographical incidents, elicit unspoken fears, desires and memories or allow a more public expression of family emotion than might normally be possible,’ argued Taylor. ‘A sympathy bond is created with the audience, which is often a family sitting in a room watched by another family sitting in a room. And close-up shots are used far more often making the heads of characters appear life-size.’

  Mark Callan, producer and director of Neighbours in the early days, adds his own thoughts. ‘We try to keep everything as simple as possible and direct it at the ordinary things that occur in every household and in every neighbourhood,’ he said in an interview in 1988. ‘We are often tempted to use a sensational story but we pull back and say, “That’s not likely to happen.”We do best when we portray the mundane in an entertaining way.’ And the programme’s values, he added, are a novelty outside Australia, given that the show contains no smoking, no swearing and only a smidgen of sex. ‘It must therefore have some appeal to British audiences, because they are different,’ he argued. ‘They have a certain novelty.’ The show was certainly a contrast to EastEnders, which had started in 1986: if anything, Neighbours most resembled Coronation Street, another soap that – at the time, anyway – displayed a genius for portraying the mundane in an enter-taining way.

  With her new-found success, Kylie’s life changed enormously. Carol took over the day-to-day running of her life, such as choosing her clothes and looking after her newly famous daughter, but Kylie was now on a treadmill and there was no turning back. ‘There’s so much pressure on me now to work, work, work,’ she confessed in 1988. ‘I just can’t say no. Sometimes it gets to me. I give so much time and energy to everyone else there’s nothing left for me. Every morning I’m woken at 5.30 a.m. and my mum drags me into a cold shower. Then she makes up my food for the day – different bags for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At home my bedroom’s a real mess with clothes everywhere – but I know Mum will take care of it. I have a real weakness for clothes and I like her to help me choose them. Mum’s really my best friend.’ And what of her other friends? ‘I’m too tired to chat and I never have time to go out anywhere with them,’ admitted the exhausted star.

  Finally, the strain took its toll. At the 1988 Logies, Kylie won an unprecedented four awards in one night, including Gold Logie for the Most Popular Television Personality. Jason, meanwhile, was named Most Popular Actor, while Neighbours itself won the Most Popular Drama Series category. Instead of celebrating with the others, Kylie rushed back to her hotel room, where she spent the night sobbing hysterically.

  By the age of just 20, Kylie had earned enough to buy herself a £250,000 house in Melbourne, but the poor girl was having a long dark night of the soul, not least because her singing career was also beginning to bloom. ‘I work a 12-hour day on Neighbours starting at 6.30 a.m. every morning,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m in the studio until 7.15 p.m. and even when you are not in front of the cameras you have to sit waiting in the dark and smoky dressing room. I really thought I was going to fade away at one point – I lost a stone in five weeks and when I told my doctor how hard I was working, he was horrified. Apart from the hours I was working with Neighbours, I had been putting in a lot of work to get my pop career started. I was rushing around so much I didn’t have time to eat. In the end I couldn’t face sitting down for a proper meal and I was so scared I’d get anorexic. I do envy other people my age. Most 20-year-olds don’t have a care in the world. I wonder if it’s all worth it.’

  Others certainly thought it was: no less a personage than the late Diana, Princess of Wales became a fan. The princess and the showgirl met at a bicentennial concert in Sydney in the late 1980s and Kylie recalls, ‘I was desperate to ask Princess Diana if she watched the series, but I didn’t dare. I needn’t have worried, though – she told me straight away that she loved it. Prince Charles overheard our conversation and said that it sounded so good, he must watch it too!’

  There were consolations, though: romance was blossoming behind the scenes as well as on the screen. Jason Donovan had become more than just a friend – although the pair fiercely denied a relationship for years – and Kylie was forced to confess the truth to David. ‘I was devastated, shattered,’ he said some years after the split. ‘We’d never really talked about marriage but I had just always assumed that we would be together forever. I’ve never totally got over her,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve never let myself get so involved again. To this day, despite having met him quite often, I have never been able to bring myself to talk to Jason. I have nothing to say to the man – and never will have. But I’m still very fond of Kylie. She’s a lovely girl. She will always have a special place in my heart.’

  To the rest of the world, Kylie was being extremely coy where Jason was concerned. ‘We work together so much, imagine how awful it would be if we didn’t like each other,’ she said brightly. ‘I have no plans to settle down just yet. I have bought a small place in Melbourne which I hope to live in one day but at the moment I am happy living in my parents’ house.’

  It was an uncomfortable end to her relation-ship with David. ‘I knew something was up when Kylie told me she wanted our romance to end because she had a lot of pressure from work – she was very busy,’ he recalled. ‘She also said she couldn’t trust me as a boyfriend – I wasn’t there all the time. Well, that was great coming from her! I had often asked her about Jason. After all they worked closely together and played girlfriend and boyfriend. But Kylie always insisted they were just good friends.’

  Kylie had strived for the success she had now attained and was aware that she would have to work hard to maintain it, travelling thousands of miles across Australia just to make a personal appearance. ‘I wouldn’t want something to slip by, it might ruin my career,’ she said. ‘Just because thousands of people see me and there are millions of Kylie clones and even Kylie dolls, it doesn’t mean I can relax.’

  Jason was equally hard working and committed to his career. ‘We seem to be working against the clock all the time,’ he revealed. ‘There’s no place for egos in our show. And if anyone doesn’t know their lines, they could be out – it’s as simple as that.’

  Kylie also felt responsible towards her younger fans. ‘I feel very responsible because I worry that young girls will identify with the character of Charlene too much. I don’t want 17-year-olds leaving home to get married like Charlene did – it would be on my conscience. Charlene is irresponsible and a tomboy, not like me at all.

  ‘I don’t have any girlfriends any more because I’m too tired to chat and I never have time to go out and socialise,’ she confessed. ‘I miss them but I know that if I don’t concentrate on my career now, I may never get a second chance. One day I’d like to lead a normal life and not be nagged by people about losing too much weight. Sometimes I do wish I had a nine-to-five job.’

  It was not to be. Kylie has never had a nine-to-five job, but then again, she has never really wanted one. She wanted a show business career, and she wanted to be famous. She had seized her chances, both professional and personal, with both hands and when she
wasn’t working too hard, she was making the most of every opportunity that came her way. And the latest opportunity happened to be a relationship with Jason Donovan.

  3

  Scott and Charlene

  People just like the idea of us being in love.

  It neatly compartmentalises us but it’s just not true

  JASON DONOVAN, 1988

  At was one of the worst-kept secrets in the world of Australian show business – but its two main protagonists were determined that it would not leak out elsewhere. Kylie and Jason might have been a couple on screen, but that’s where it ended, they insisted. They had known each other since they were both 11, they were just friends and why couldn’t the rest of the world just accept that? All well and good, of course, except for one minor cavil: they weren’t just friends at all. In the best tradition of show business romance, just as their fictional counterparts had done on screen, the two had fallen in love.

  Kylie and Jason wanted to keep it quiet, though, for a number of reasons. For a start, both wished to be able to conduct the relationship away from the harsh glare of publicity. By this time, they were both so famous in Australia and the UK that they could scarcely sneeze without it making the news. Neither of them wanted the intensive speculation as to whether they would marry in real life that was bound to erupt the moment they confirmed they were a couple. And on top of that, the powers that be on Neighbours were none too keen on the relationship being made public. Both the programme and its stars had a squeaky clean image – and no one wanted to dent that by revealing the fact that the two had become one. ‘If it ever gets out that you’re going out together,’ snapped Brian Walsh, promotions manager for Channel Ten, ‘it would just ruin the show and the popularity of your characters.’ Kylie and Jason took those words to heart and stayed schtum.