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Poptastic Kylie returns 'home'

David Sue
9/ 7/2008

LAST week, immediately after receiving her OBE from the Prince of Wales, Kylie Minogue remarked to journalists: "Although I’m from Australia, Britain does feel very much like home to me. I’ve learnt a lot from this nation".

Indeed. If there’s one distinct quality Kylie has picked up from the British, it’s surely that of the stiff upper lip, the ability to soldier on with true Dunkirk spirit despite the harshest odds. And it’s fair to say they’ve been stacked particularly high against her in recent years.

From fighting breast cancer to splitting with her long-term boyfriend, Kylie would have every right to wear her trauma and suffering on her sleeve. You might think this recently turned 40-year-old pop princess was due a lengthy period of wallowing introspection.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Against the advice of doctors, she resumed her Showgirl world tour as soon as she recovered from cancer treatment, a move that underlined her ‘business as usual’ approach.

The Showgirl tour – an expensive explosion of glitz, cabaret and flamingo feathers – was typical of Kylie’s ability to hide her inner turmoil behind glossy pop fantasy.

Of course, it’s something that comes naturally to Kylie. For a whole generation, she will always embody pop music as its most buoyant and impermeable; from her days as a Stock, Aitken & Waterman starlet in the Eighties to her Nineties incarnation as Indie Kylie, up to her current reinvention as Sexy Camp Kylie thanks to 2000’s Spinning Around and THOSE iconic gold hotpants.

Pop fantasy is the business Kylie knows best and, post-illness, it’s an industry she’s eager to return to. There was a recent new album, the disco-pop romp of X, and now she’s back on the road with this latest tour spectacular.

Costing £10 million to stage, the KylieX2008 tour sees the pop fantasist at her most eye-catching – early reports hint at a ‘Sci-Fi S&M’ theme with Kylie clad in futuristic but typically saucy outfits.

We might never see the real Kylie – the one with the inner suffering and personal neuroses.

But while she’s happy to indulge her inner showgirl and personify everything that’s joyous and free about pop music, it’d be churlish of us not to join in the fun.

Kylie plays MEN Arena on July 11, 12, 15, 17 and 18. To check ticket availability ring 0844 8478000 or visit www.ticketline.co.uk .