From leaving The X Factor to coping with a mystery illness and celebrating her 40th birthday, it has been an eventful year for Dannii Minogue. Donal O’Donoghue chats with the wiz from Oz
In her 40 years, Dannii Minogue has been many things. Before her older sister Kylie found fame on Neighbours, Dannii was already a TV star on Australia’s Young Talent Time. Later, she briefly shone on Home and Away but she was already being eclipsed by the pop princess-in-waiting.
Dannii never stopped re-inventing though: from soap opera star to pop singer to stage actress. But the wattage was low and more usually she was referred to as Kylie’s sister (or as someone once put it ‘the B-Side to Kylie’s A-Side’). That was before she found her true calling on TV as a judge on The X Factor, watched by a prime-time audience in excess of 17 million people. She’s now a mother, to Ethan, and a judge on Australia’s Got Talent. But even the versatile Minogue could not have seen the latest twist coming.
“Doctor Dannii Minogue?” There is a laugh at the other end of the line. It’s barely 24 hours since Minogue was conferred with an honorary doctorate and she’s still giddy with the news. “It was so exciting and nerve-racking”, she says. “In truth, it really hasn’t sunk in yet.” Big sister Kylie, who received her honorary doctorate the previous month, gave her a few pointers.
“She gave me the low-down on what it would be like”, says Minogue, who was speaking during one of her whistlestop visits to London to catch up with her fashion house Project D (which she runs with designer Tabitha Somerset Webb), collected her doctorate from Southampton Solent University and caught up with old mates, including The X Factor’s Louis Walsh (“he’s had a tough year”).
Everybody loves Dannii. Last month, Susan Boyle, The X Factor’s greatest discovery, trumpeted her as the show’s greatest judge and Heat magazine readers voted the Australian their favourite X Factor judge. Statistically, Minogue was the strongest link – two of her acts, including Matt Cardle in 2010, were winners, making her the show’s most successful mentor. So the news from earlier this year that she would no longer feature on The X Factor surprised many. But Minogue, who had recently become a mum at age 38, had already started shooting Australia’s Got Talent and the prospect of jetting between her home in Melbourne and London was not an option.
In any case, her health became a serious worry. But now she’s back on top: a new show, a new style and a new book. My Style is a book that celebrates style over substance: a merry-go-round of images and advice and stuff that the gorgeous Dannii just loves. We learn that Dannii likes ‘dressing up’ and ‘getting organised’ and that her ‘style icons’ include Lauren Bacall, Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor. Dannii writes about finding her inner Lulu (after the silent screen icon, Louise Brooks), her outer image (lots of glamorous frocks and eye-catching accessories) and, of course, her own fashion range, Project D.
It’s bright and busy and it gave me a headache: but then I was never the target audience. Last year, Minogue’s name was on a far more serious publication, a warts-and-all bestselling autobiography called My Story. In that she wrote of being bullied at school (her tormentor was a boy called Fat Billy), her tough times on The X Factor with fellow judge Sharon Osbourne and how she coped with the death of her friend, Laura, from cancer and her sister Kylie’s battle with the same illness.
It pitched Minogue as a plucky survivor and in the past 12 months, she has had to fall back on those survival instincts again when she was struck down by a mystery illness, later diagnosed as an underactive thyroid. “I was worried because I didn’t know what was wrong with me”, she says. “I just knew that I wasn’t well. That’s the scariest thing and it turned my world upside-down. I tried not to pin it on anything and the minute it was diagnosed was such a relief.”
In her book, Monogue confesses that it has taken her nearly all her 40 years to find and refine her style. “I’m quite classical in my style”, she says. “I don’t follow trends and I really dress to suit my shape. I should have been doing that years ago but I guess with everybody saying ‘wear this’ and ‘wear that’, it got to the point where I had to work it out myself. In a way, that’s what the book is about, giving some tips on how to work out your own style.”
Minogue is tiny: a petite 5 ft 2 inches with size two-and-a-half feet and doll-like proportions. In most photographs and on TV, she totters about on high heels but ever since she became a mum that too has changed. “I guess one of the funniest changes, in a fashion sense, is flat shoes”, she says of motherhood. “I didn’t own flat shoes before Ethan; they just weren’t a part of my wardrobe. But now I’m a mum and running up and down stairs carrying my baby, so it’s all about flat shoes. Most of friends thought that they’d never see me in them.”
But then motherhood is something Minogue never seriously considered – until she met Kris Smith (she had been previously, and briefly, married to the Nip/Tuck actor, Julian McMahon). “I never thought that I would be a mum”, she says. “I wasn’t getting clucky and wanting kids so it was never a plan for me. But meeting Kris changed all of that. From the first time I met him he kept saying, ‘come on, we got to have kids!’ Normally, it’s the other way round but I appreciated that. If I had been with someone who didn’t want kids I might not have become a mum.”
Now she relishes the role. “Every time I look at Ethan I feel this smile coming on my face, a smile unlike any other smile”, she says. “My mum visited me when I was in hospital after the birth and told me that she could see that smile of unconditional love. It’s just the best feeling. Ethan is doing little things at the moment. He’s starting to say words. Dadda is always the first word apparently and I was told not to get upset if he says that. That’s an easy sound for them to make. Then he said Mama. Now his two favourite words are ‘ball’ and ‘car’. That might be because Kris is a rugby player.”
Minogue first met Smith, an English rugby player turned model, at a nightclub in Ibiza in 2008. Earlier this year, it was rumoured that their relationship was on the rocks: something that Minogue always pooh-poohed. “Some days you read stuff about yourself that is either nasty or untrue and it upsets you, but I don’t want to be this hardened entertainment person that doesn’t care”, she says. Back when her former X Factor colleague, Cheryl Cole, was fired from the US version of The X Factor, Minogue rushed to her defence on Twitter. “It’s impossible for me to work on a show like that, and be a mentor and work alongside people and then walk away and not care about them”, she says. “That’s not me.”
She is good mates with fellow judge from Australia’s Got Talent, Brian McFadden, who offered to be godfather to Ethan. Her fashion range, Project D, is in its second year and Minogue admits it is still “finding its feet”. She reckons that, like many new companies, it will probably take five years to get properly established. “It has been a lot of learning and development with getting the designs right”, she says (she works on the designs with Somerset Webb).
She also reckons her own style has altered accordingly – from long skirts to shorter rock chick numbers – and joked earlier that it may be a mid-life crisis thing (she turned 40 last October). “I’ve been a bit prudish the last few years as I usually go for the longer hems”, she says. “I don’t know why recently I’ve gone crazy and started wearing those dresses with the shorter hemlines. I guess it’s either that or buy a Ferarri.”
Or return to The X Factor? Last month, rumours were whistling through the internet that Minogue might return to the reality show – its ratings have not been too healthy of late – but she’s quick to dismiss any speculation. “I have finished Australia’s Got Talent for this year and I haven’t made any other TV commitments at the moment”, she says. “Yes, I have looked at a number of TV options in the UK but at the moment, health comes first. What’s important for me now is being with my family and looking after myself and getting back on track. So I’m winding down to a family Christmas at home in Melbourne. That’s sunshine, barbecue and swimming in the pool. You’re probably thinking, ‘that’s not Christmas!’ but for me it is. It is how I’ve grown up and I’ve only ever had one cold Christmas.”
