Читать книгу Kylie - Julie Aspinall - Страница 11

As chance would have it, Kylie’s childhood ambition in life was not to be an actress, but a pop star. Now, in addition to her work on television, she had a burgeoning singing career, which had come about almost by chance. In 1986 Kylie, along with the rest of the cast from Neighbours, had been asked to sing at an Aussie Rules football club benefit. She contributed a duet with the Australian actor Jon Waters: together the two of them warbled a rendition of ‘I Got You Babe’. No one could believe it. This chirpy Aussie sparrow turned out to have the voice of a fully grown Aussie songbird: the girl with the tiny frame was pelting out the number in a manner that wouldn’t have been out of place on Broadway.

As luck would have it Mike Duffy, a producer with songwriters Stock, Aitken and Waterman, was visiting Australia and Kylie was asked to go and see him. Intensely nervous, given that disastrous demo she had recorded a few years earlier, Kylie none the less plucked up the courage and went to discuss working on a project together. The result was her first single, ‘The Locomotion’, a cover version of the 1962 hit. Everyone was staggered: the tiny little actress had one belter of a voice, to say nothing of a presence that lit up the whole video as she pranced and skipped across it. The song reached number one in her home country and by the end of 1987, was Australia’s best-selling single of the year. Carol, Kylie’s mother, was as delighted as everyone else, and amazed at the numerous talents her children were now displaying. ‘I have no idea where they get their singing from,’ she said. ‘I can’t sing a note. I couldn’t even sing in church.’

But by now Kylie really was pushing herself: some reports claim that she was close to a nervous breakdown as she pursued both careers in tandem, taking almost no time at all off to relax. ‘I was so sick I had to have a day off,’ she explained later. ‘It gave me a few minutes to think, What am I doing? What am I doing here? I would rather have a little shop which is what I have always dreamed of and having a little holiday house and getting married and having kids. That would be easy. Why can’t I just do that? There was so much pressure by so many different people and I just had to say, “Whoa! Stop!” I had everything but I had nothing.’

The trouble was, of course, that she didn’t really just want to have a little shop; she wanted a big, international, successful career. And so Kylie didn’t stop for long. After the success of ‘The Locomotion’, another record was on the cards and this time, on Duffy’s recommendation, it was decided that Stock, Aitken and Waterman themselves should be involved. Kylie flew in to London in 1987 to meet the trio. Never having seen Neighbours and having entirely forgotten his promise to meet her, Pete Waterman was surprised to receive a call from Mike Stock informing him that there was ‘a small Antipodean in reception expecting to do something with us now.’ ‘She should be so lucky,’ retorted Waterman. By all accounts, Stock liked the idea of that, picked up a pen and wrote a song. A superstar was born.

Pete Waterman and Mike Stock remember the initial meeting, in which Kylie looked absolutely nothing like a superstar. ‘She looked tired out,’ said Pete in 1989. ‘I suppose it was like looking at your youngest daughter. There was this quiet, rather shy and slim little girl, who had flown halfway round the world to see us. To be honest, we were rather brusque and off-hand with her.’ They certainly didn’t see her potential and it was to be some time before they realised quite what a winner they had on their hands.

Kylie had waited several days to see them, though, and, with the determination that has been such a help throughout her career, point blank refused to go away until they had agreed to write her a song. So they did. Mike weaved his magic: ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ took 20 minutes to write, 30 minutes to record and, as they tell it, they put her in a taxi and sent her back to Australia. ‘When she left the studio,’ said Mike, ‘we honestly thought that we’d never see her again. We could see that she was a good singer, had a quick ear and could pick up songs easily, but that was really about all. We knew nothing about Neighbours. We just bashed the song out and sent her on her way.’

The producers were so unimpressed with their new discovery that they didn’t even listen to the tape they’d recorded with Kylie until the following week. ‘I can remember being at our Christmas party and hearing this record which was so good I went over to ask the disc jockey who it was,’ said Pete in an interview a couple of years after that small Antipodean became famous, ‘and it turned out to be Kylie. We completely underestimated her popularity. She’s a star. Kylie has the potential to become an enormous celebrity.

‘She’s a millionairess already, but the sky’s the limit for what she could achieve,’ he continued. ‘She could be the biggest female singer of all time if she wants to. She has a very special talent. She just comes alive the moment she’s put in front of a microphone. I’ve seen her look ill with exhaustion after flying in from Australia, step on stage and be electric. It’s the sign of true star quality. She’s a very quiet, normal girl but the moment she has to perform, wham! She comes alive. It’s really quite dazzling, because when you meet her she’s really not very impressive.’ What Pete really meant was that Kylie can be very quiet. But like so many stars, she has something like an internal switch: put her in performing mode and she will turn in to a megastar, beloved by camera and audience alike.

There was a very short blip, however: the trio tried and failed to get a record company to take Kylie on board, and so Pete set up his own label, PWL, and released the disc. ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ was an enormous success, reaching not only the top of the charts in Australia and Britain but also in numerous other countries such as Hong Kong and Finland, previously Neighbours-free zones. It sold 700,000 copies and made the 20-year-old Kylie the youngest female artist to have a British number one. And this was just the start. Out of her next 10 singles, she had three number ones, five number twos and two number fours. Her first album, Kylie, went on to sell 14 million copies. ‘I don’t know if any pop star will ever be as popular as Kylie was back then,’ reflected Pete Waterman later. ‘She just transformed from this innocent non-worldly wise little girl in to a star. She was a tiny, 18-year-old girl, had a huge workload and was exhausted half the time, but as soon as she had to work her whole personality would transform.’

Then came the next question: Kylie was the ultimate in unthreatening girls next door, but would that sell records over longer term? Would she, at some point, have to grow up? Now in her mid-thirties, Kylie still has the body of a 14-year-old, but for many years now that’s been combined with a sultry, sexy sophistication, making her one of the world’s most desirable women. Back then, though, her idea of sophistication was blowing bubble bath off her nose as she relaxed in the tub (as witnessed in the video for ‘I Should Be So Lucky’). What should be done?

Stock, Aitken and Waterman deny they did anything to boost Kylie’s popularity by changing her image. ‘We never tell any of our artists how they should look or what to wear,’ said Pete just before the big change did, indeed, come about. ‘We don’t change their names, either. The Americans wanted Kylie to change hers, because they couldn’t pronounce Minogue. We fought that one hard. We really didn’t change her at all. Her appeal is very much as the girl next door. That’s the way people see her as Charlene in Neighbours, and that’s how she is in real life.

‘She’s not sexy and sensuous. She’s not busty and teasing. She’s lovable, wholesome and ordinary – she’s definitely not a fantasy figure. She’s the real thing.’ Pete was certainly wrong in part of that assessment – in that Kylie was shortly to become one of the world’s most sought-after fantasy figures – but as far as her staying power was concerned, they were absolutely right. Kylie, after a variety of incarnations, is still here.

Back then, Kylie even achieved the previously unthinkable: she toppled Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s golden boy, Rick Astley, off the top slot in the charts and became the jewel in the crown of PWL. ‘I think it’s a perfect pop song,’ said Kylie. ‘You can’t help singing it even if you hate it and it’s certainly gone on to prove that.’ Pete, meanwhile, was delighted. ‘This girl is a phenomenon – kids relate to Kylie,’ he said. ‘But it’s strange looking back now to January ’88. In November ’87 Rick Astley was our biggest star and potentially our biggest for the next two years. Kylie Minogue outshone him and that’s a real quirk of fate.’

Kylie was delighted with her new-found musical success. She had become a famous soap star and was now a famous singer, quite making up for her early teenage years in the shadows – and yet still the shadow of Dannii lingered on, not least because Dannii had also kept busy, branching out from her own career as a soap star and diversifying into other fields. ‘Dannii already had her own clothing range and you could sense that Kylie always felt she had a lot to live up to,’ said Pete. ‘Some of the more outrageous images that Kylie came up with later in her career were, I think, a result of trying to emulate the wild, rebellious personality of her sister.’

Bodyguard Alf Weaver, now 67, looked after Kylie in the early days for about a year and a half from 1987, when she was with Pete Waterman. ‘She was very easy-going and I really liked working with her – I thought she was terrific,’ he says now. ‘She was very friendly and bubbly and we got on really well. I hadn’t heard much of her singing before but I was with her quite a lot in the studios and you could just tell she was a class act – and I’ve been around a lot of class acts, including Sinatra. As soon as she sang, you could hear the voice. You knew she was something special.’

She was still a little girl from the suburbs of Melbourne, though, and shy with it. ‘It was never a hardship for Kylie to do interviews,’ says Alf. ‘But sometimes she would get nervous about the fans, so we used to get the kids’ autograph books, take them to Kylie and she would sign them – but she wouldn’t actually come out. She certainly seems a lot more confident now but then I looked after her when she was starting out in her career. I had been to Australia and sometimes we would talk about it – I think she missed home.

‘The thing about Kylie was she took it all in her stride – I don’t think she was ever really nervous performing. Peter Waterman treated her very well – whatever she wanted he got her. I think they had a very good relationship. It was a bit of a risk for Peter to take her on. He had great judgement to pick her and start her off. There was the odd occasion when she threw tantrums. It was usually to do with the venue. We did do some ropy clubs. She would take one look at the place and say “What is this?” But they insisted, they said “You’ve got to play these, you’ve got to work your way up.” She wanted to perform in bigger venues – she was very ambitious. I also looked after her sister Dannii for a while – they are very similar – very bubbly and outgoing.’

Of course, not everyone took to Kylie’s sugary sweet style: some unkind voices took to calling her ‘The Singing Budgie’, T-shirts bearing the legend ‘I Hate Kylie Minogue’ sprang up and a Melbourne radio station took to playing a song entitled ‘I Should Be So Yucky’. Matters got worse still when Daniel Abineri, a British-born singer and actor, released another spoof, this one entitled ‘I Can See Your Nipples’, a reference to Kylie’s holiday in Bali with Jason. This proved to be an insult too far. ‘This is a cheap, crude attempt to cash in on Kylie’s name,’ snapped a very irritated spokesman for the star. ‘We’ll pull out all the stops to have the disc banned.’ Abineri himself retorted, ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It’s just a fun send-up of a very popular young lady. Kylie obviously hasn’t a sense of humour.’

These days Kylie has a very good sense of humour: she is as self-deprecating as anyone involved in the music business and well understands that her success owes as much to luck as to talent. Back then, though, for all her international standing, and despite the fact that she’d been a couple with Jason for some years, she was in many ways little more than a child and all the teasing – not all of it meant that kindly – was having an adverse effect on her. Noticing this, Kylie’s friends were beginning to develop a sense of humour bypass too.

‘Leave her alone,’ snapped Kylie’s fellow Neighbours star Anne Charleston, who played Madge Bishop in the soap. ‘Kylie has been very upset by some of the criticism, although she is now a lot more confident than she was. But the whole cast was very angry about what was being done to her. We are a very close company and all like each other. But it was Kylie they went for in particular. Kylie is now coping a lot better with all this. I wouldn’t say Kylie is tough, but she is not stupid and now knows not to take things to heart.’

But they didn’t leave her alone; indeed, Jason started coming in for some flak, too. At the beginning of 1989, by the time both had left Neighbours to carve out solo singing careers, they were sneered at by The Bulletin, a mass circulation magazine, which did an annual round up of famous Australians. Kylie was ‘a poor little thing’ and Jason a ‘flaxen haired warbler.’ ‘Jason teamed up with former co-star Kylie Minogue to make a flop record “Everything For You”’ it sneered – though someone subsequently pointed out that it had actually been called ‘Especially For You’ and that far from being a flop it had reached number one in Britain and sold one million copies worldwide.

The jibes were becoming increasingly unfair and Dannii stepped in to defend her sister. ‘She [Kylie] has had to toughen up just to survive,’ Dannii commented. ‘She has changed from being an innocent into someone who can cope with show business at its worst. It has forced her to lose some of her innocence, but how else do you get through in this business? Kylie has cried over the things that have been said about her in Australia. She has done so much but Britain seems to respect her much more.

‘It’s terrible for Kylie. There are radio stations here that refuse to play her records. It’s such an insult. They claim her records are naff. Yet every time there is a pop poll, Kylie comes out on top. The other night she won an Aria Award in Sydney. It was a great achievement, yet people were scathing. She felt elated and downcast at the same time. I keep telling Kylie it doesn’t matter. “Look at Michael Jackson,” I tell her. “He has had more things said about him than anyone and he’s the greatest star in the world.” If folk want to be bitchy, then let them. The real proof of Kylie’s ability is that people like her music and keep watching her on TV.’

It was a very supportive move on Dannii’s part and indeed, throughout their lives, when one Minogue sister has been up against it, the other has come to her support. And yet, beneath the surface, the old rivalry with Dannii still bubbled. ‘Kylie idolised Dannii and no matter how big she became she always thought Dannii would be bigger,’ says Pete Waterman. ‘We were offered the chance to sign Dannii but there was no way we could do it. It would have dented Kylie’s confidence. And anyway, Dannii’s not an artist. She’s someone who’s good at getting publicity.’

Someone the team were prepared to sign, however, was Kylie’s old chum Jason Donovan – actually then still her boyfriend – whom some people suspected of being slightly jealous of Kylie’s success. He followed Kylie to the UK to talk to the producers, although he remained outwardly cautious. ‘We’re talking about it, we’ll just have to wait and see,’ he said in an interview before his debut on Terry Wogan’s talk show.

‘It’s on the cards and hopefully it will all come together in a week or so.’ And were he and Kylie actually more than just good friends? asked an interviewer, given that the two had resumed their cat-and-mouse game with the press. ‘I have known Kylie since she was 13 and I can’t see why people can’t understand why we can still be friends and not have a relationship,’ Jason snapped. ‘I haven’t got a girlfriend, I’m a free body and I would certainly think twice about marriage. But I’m only 19, I’ve got a lot of things to do and I don’t really want to be tied down.’

Kylie felt the same way – she had by now quit Neighbours for pastures new, and Jason shortly afterwards followed suit, but she vehemently denied suggestions that she thought she’d got too big for the show. ‘It really hurt that people thought that,’ she said. ‘They think I’m made of steel but I’m not.’ In fact, Kylie was well aware of how fortunate she’d been. ‘I owe a hell of a lot to Neighbours and I will always remember that,’ she said at a later date. ‘Okay, so it isn’t Gone With The Wind, but it’s popular, very popular, and I’m proud to have been associated with it.’

On another occasion, however, a different version of the truth seemed to emerge. It suggested that Kylie had always seen Neighbours as nothing more than a stepping stone to higher things. ‘Naturally I welcomed the opportunity of appearing in it, because it opened the show business door to me,’ she said in an unguarded moment. ‘But I couldn’t wait to get out of it as soon as possible. I never liked soaps, whether they’re home produced or imported. To be honest, and in spite of its success, Neighbours is rough. I mean, if you analyse it, it’s the story of three families and everything happens to them. It’s all rather implausible and sometimes I have to grit my teeth when I film an unlikely situation. I shudder at the speed it’s turned out day after day. The writers are usually still working on the script when we’ve started filming.’ Suddenly she collected herself. ‘Of course, I’m not complaining,’ she added hastily. ‘Neighbours has been marvellous for me. I’m just amazed that so many people are addicted to it. Trouble is that it gives a completely distorted view of normal life in Australia.’ In fact, Kylie was already ready to leave Oz. ‘I want to operate out of London because that’s where it’s all happening,’ she revealed.

Not all her Neighbours co-stars were as supportive as Anne Charleston had been, though, especially when Kylie appeared to be letting her fabulous success go to her head. In November 1988 she was in Britain for the Royal Variety Command Show, as was the rest of the cast of Neighbours. Kylie, who by now also had a successful singing career, refused to allow herself to be photographed with them. ‘I just don’t know what’s got in to her,’ spat an unnamed Neighbours star. ‘She’s got her own life now,’ said her erstwhile co-star Stefan Dennis. ‘I suppose that’s it as far as we’re concerned.’ They were bitter words – but the truth of the matter was that Kylie really was about to leave all her old co-stars behind.

It would take a while for that new life to be sorted out. As it happens, her next starring role was to be in a much-derided film entitled The Delinquents. But before she started work on that film, in an odd foreshadowing of what was to come, Kylie was talking excitedly about appearing in a TV film set in the 1950s, in which she would play a priest’s mistress. ‘It’s a long way from Neighbours, but it sounds like good fun,’ she gushed. ‘It’s a Fifties love story and looks steamier than it is. I’m not going to do any sex scenes.’ Intriguingly, when Kylie was asked who she would like to take on the role of the priest, she named two people. ‘I would be thrilled to make love to either of them … on screen,’ she confessed impishly. ‘They are my heroes.’ Mel Gibson was one – hardly a surprising choice given that Mel was and is a leading Australian heart-throb. The other name was one that was known not for acting, but for music: Michael Hutchence.

First, however, it was time for one of Kylie’s more misjudged adventures: a starring role as 15-year-old Lola in the £10-million film The Delinquents. Set in 1950s Australia, the film tells the story of a young couple who battle to be together against all the odds: separation, abortions, passionate love scenes, drugs, drink, a fate involving working in a launderette and a topless Kylie all combined to shock a few delicate souls and launch Kylie into a career as a sex bomb. She had made it as a television star and a singer, so why not as a film star too?

No reason at all really, except for one: the film was absolutely terrible. For some reason, all of Kylie’s movies, with the one exception of Moulin Rouge, have been best forgotten and this one really is no exception. You can sometimes tell when a film is going to be a real turkey right from the outset – something that is certainly the case here. A very early warning signal should be that the teenagers’ disaffection would appear to stem from not being able to get in to the cinema, not because they were disruptive influences, but because the auditorium was full. There may be less plausible reasons to take against society, but it’s hard to think of one off-hand.

There were other early hints that the film might not live up to expectations. First David Bowie, who was supposed to have been writing the music for the film, pulled out because he hated the script. Then Pete Waterman, no less, refused to be involved, because the film-makers wanted him to remix a string of 1950s rock ’n’ roll originals, as opposed to writing original music for the film. ‘They basically wanted rehashed oldies and I don’t see the point,’ he commented, tersely – though after a plea from Kylie, he did help her out with one song: ‘Tears On My Pillow’, which gave her another hit single.

Whatever its shortcomings, this was Kylie’s film debut, and one clearly influenced by her heroine Olivia Newton-John. Like Olivia in Grease, Kylie was transformed in the course of the film from sweet girl to pouting sex bomb, but that’s pretty much where the resemblance between the two films ends. With hindsight, that might have been to Kylie’s advantage, given that her staying power has quite matched that of her idol, but at the time everyone, but everyone, saw her as the next ONJ. ‘Hollywood is her ultimate professional goal,’ explained a friend. ‘She has been compared to Olivia Newton-John because she is Australian and because she combines singing and acting. Olivia is certainly one of her idols. Kylie would love to do what she has done.’

Kylie was certainly in one of her more driven modes. At her twenty-first birthday party, she surprised her family and her friends when she made an emotional speech apologising for not being able to spend more time with them and promising to do so in the future. She also confessed to lingering doubts regarding her star status. ‘I can’t be too comfortable with where I am because I could be a nobody tomorrow,’ she confessed. ‘The demands never end. You really are giving away a part of yourself. When I am tired and think I don’t want to do this anymore, I just tell myself that I might not be here in a few months and that there are millions who would kill to be where I am. It’s lonely at the top sometimes. There are so many people who want me to do things and I feel I can’t let them down.’

To be honest, not everyone realised she was at the top. Charlie Schlatter, Kylie’s American-born co-star in the film, remembers when he was first told the identity of his partner in crime. ‘I didn’t know who she was,’ he admitted. ‘I had no idea how big she was in Britain and Australia until the film company told me and said they thought she would be a good actress.’ He learned pretty quickly who Kylie was, though: over in Australia Charlie was just a little-known Yank actor lucky enough to be cast alongside the nation’s sweetheart.

Neither was their first meeting particularly auspicious. Charlie had just got off an 18-hour flight from the United States and was in no fit state to meet anyone. ‘I said, “I’m sorry I can’t even focus on your face, I’ve got terrible jet lag,” Charlie recalled. ‘But the next day we read the script and we had a really nice friendship. When I first saw her I was glad she was shorter than I am [Charlie is 5’7”]. I thought, I am going to look good. She is very normal, very down to earth. She didn’t go on about what she was doing. I didn’t know if it helped that I didn’t know who she was, but it certainly didn’t hurt, either.’

Kylie quickly endeared herself to everyone on the film with her freshness and generosity: aware that many people would be expecting Kylie the diva, she was at pains to assure them that she was really part of the crew. She also paid for an impromptu birthday party for Charlie at the end of the first day of filming, a very wise act indeed on her part that made her popular with everyone. ‘Kylie was very generous, very much the leading lady, which was very impressive,’ said Todd Boyce, who also played a part in the film.

There was the inevitable speculation about an off-screen romance, not least because the two stars of the film were seen taking bicycle rides together (in fact, they were rehearsing scenes in the film) but in this case the rumours really would seem to be completely unfounded. ‘Charlie’s a great mate, but that’s just about it, I’m afraid,’ said Kylie. It was, however, a first experience for both in that neither had done explicit on screen love scenes before. ‘It was not as erotic filming a love scene as some people think,’ revealed Charlie. ‘It was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. It was the first time I had done love scenes on screen, which was one of the reasons I chose to do the film.

‘I have never played a romantic character before. I think it helped that it was the first time Kylie had done a scene like that, too. There was a lot of raw energy there, which was good because some things took a lot of takes. But she was really professional about it. There was one nude scene, though I had to do it on my own and it was a closed set because they don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. But when I looked up, all the crew there were women. It was very funny. The crew were great, they were real ladies and gentlemen.’

By this time, as news filtered out that Australia’s sweetheart was to be filming some truly shocking scenes compared to her previous work on television, the film was beginning to provoke a tide of moral outrage. Charlie was scathing. ‘I really feel bad for those people if their lives are so sheltered and all they have to complain about is this,’ he raged. ‘I am 23. I want to do projects that are fun or say something socially or spiritually. Sexy is such a tough word to define. To me a woman with thick wool socks can be sexy. It is not a sexual movie. It is not pornography. There is one love scene in it, the first time they make love, when their characters are very uncomfortable. I think some people might experience that discomfort again, recalling the time they lost their virginity. I think it is fine to make someone feel like that, to put them in touch with that feeling.’

It seems incredible now that anyone was so shocked by the film, but many people were genuinely taken aback that their favourite TV star was showing an altogether less wholesome side. One commercial for the film was banned on British television because, according to the IBA and ITV Association, it ‘contained material that was too near the knuckle’. (The clip in question had Kylie gazing at Charlie and saying, ‘Make love to me,’ followed by the comment, ‘I love the way he looks when he’s just about to …’)

Kylie herself reacted angrily to the ban and defended her character. ‘Lola is very powerful and very sensitive and she goes through a lot of changes,’ she insisted. ‘I felt there was something there I could grab hold of, whereas a lot of the scripts that were offered to me before were pretty crummy. There were a lot of seductive scenes and that sort of stuff and a lot of the characters that were a complete copy of Charlene and I wanted to get away from that.’

And then there was Kylie’s ambition. With every success she’s had in her life – and with every failure, too – Kylie’s ambition has grown and now, with her first film on the go, her desire to succeed was more intense than ever. ‘I always think there’s more to do,’ she said. ‘And I’ve got so much more to learn. This is my first film. I’ve never done theatre; I’ve never done songwriting; I haven’t done much live work. There’s a multitude of things to do. I’m interested in things outside of entertainment as well, and although I feel older than 21, I have to remind myself that I am 21 and I’ve got a lot of years ahead.

‘This was my big one, my debut. You can’t do a debut again, can you? You only get one chance at it. I think I was a little bit nervous because there are so many expectations of me. But I’d just like to do a good job for myself.’

Kylie admitted, however, that it was a big change for her image to go from sweet little Charlene to raunchy ol’ Lola. ‘When I think everyone’s going to see it, it makes me blush,’ she admitted happily. ‘But I still feel I’ve done the right thing. You don’t see me completely nude. And at least I feel like I’ve grown up. I don’t think I’ll lose any fans. I may gain wider acceptance.’

And then the film opened. For an all-too-brief spell, it looked as if The Delinquents might actually do well. It took about £1 million in its first few days and looked as if it might even overshadow Batman, which had also just come out. A Warner Brothers spokeswoman declared, ‘We don’t have exact figures but The Delinquents has had a huge opening. It’s not as good as Batman yet, but it’s definitely up there.’

And then reality hit. One review (one of the kinder reviews, at that) put the film straight into the top ten worst movies of 1989. ‘Poor old Kylie,’ it said. ‘She loses her virginity at 15 to a teenage rebel. Her mother drags her off the train taking the couple to a new life and forces pregnant Kylie to have an abortion. And that’s just for starters! I imagine we’re supposed to take this load of old Australian codswallop seriously. But you would need a heart of stone not to laugh helplessly at the ludicrous plot and awful acting. Kylie’s fans will probably love every awful minute. Others should avoid it like the plague.’

Most critics were harsher still. ‘Images stick in the gullet,’ snapped one. ‘The 15-year-old Kylie character Lola (cliché Lolita connotations here) being driven to the abortion clinic by her evil and selfish mother; Lola staggering out after the abortion, barely able to walk; sheet tossing sex scenes every five minutes (or so it seems) after boy meets girl; bare breasts and buttocks; sex, sex and more sex, with Kylie’s crackling and cockatoo whooping.’ And from another: ‘Pulp fiction manipulated by an army of fat cats counting shekels behind the myth that is Minogue.’ And another: ‘Ultimately, The Delinquents is a weakly handled, insubstantial film. Kylie has as much acting charisma as cold porridge.’

Poor Kylie. It wasn’t what she had expected at all and although the film briefly topped the charts in Britain and got to number three in Australia, it flopped in the United States and is now remembered as a severe embarrassment for all concerned. More recently, nude shots were published in the newspapers that were actually stills from the film of Kylie lying naked on a bed. The star did not take this reminder of her past very well; she was absolutely furious. ‘The last thing Kylie needs is someone digging out old pictures to ruin things for her,’ a friend told the press.

The pictures ruined nothing (these days the great viewing public is far more interested in the mature Kylie’s bottom than the ingénue Kylie’s nakedness) but they certainly reminded Kylie of a film she would really rather forget. And even back then, as the reception to The Delinquents became increasingly hostile, she quickly started sounding more resigned as to whether her fans would like the film or not. She also hastily started talking about her next project – a second album called Enjoy Yourself with Stock, Aitken and Waterman. As a matter of fact, all things considered, Kylie was appearing remarkably upbeat for a woman whose cinematic debut had been so well and truly panned. At first, onlookers put it down to the resumption of her musical career. But her latest collaboration with her mentors was not the only thing putting a spring in Kylie’s step – something, or rather, someone – was providing a distraction from the dismal reviews, too. Kylie’s relationship with Jason was – unbeknownst to the latter – finally at an end. She had met another man.