‘I will survive’

Kylie Minogue bares her soul about her cancer ordeal. Giles Hattersley reveals the full story of her year of living dangerously

The sun shone brightly at the Minogue family home in Melbourne in early May last year. The eldest daughter was home from Paris, surrounded by her nearest and dearest, when the news came.

"The moment my doctor told me, I went silent," says Kylie Minogue. "My mum and dad were with me, then we all went to pieces."

The pop star was due to start a sellout Australian tour four days later. Instead she had been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer at 36.

Her first instinct was to do what she had always done: get back to work. "I was saying, "No, I've got my flight to Sydney in two hours. I'm getting on a plane."

Eventually her father Ron, 65, grabbed hold of his daughter, saying sternly, "No. You're not getting a plane. You'll just sit down."

Minogue was in a daze and unable to absorb the information. To try to clear her head, she took a walk on the beach with her brother Brendan, and boyfriend Olivier Martinez, the French film actor.

She had "one day's grace" before telling her public. After making the announcement next day, "I was virtually a prisoner in the house. I was completely thrown into another world."

This is how Minogue recounts it in an interview broadcast on Sky TV one. It is the first time the singer has spoken at any length of her 14-month "ordeal". ("I hate to use that word," she says cheerily, "but it kinda sums it up.")

Throughout the interview Minogue looks unlike a woman who nearly died. At times she appears strained as the struggle to find the right words, but there are no tears - at least not proper ones - because she says she doesn't like to dwell.

The headscarf is gone. The sunken cheeks have turned rosy. Her hair is back, cropped and dyed a fetching blonde. She looks gamine, not poorly. She wears diamonds.

Interviewer: Is it important for you to feel as though you are constantly moving forwards and you are constantly taking risks?

Minogue: Yeah… having had cancer, one important thing to know is you're still the same person at the end, you are the same person during it. You're stripped down to, you know, you're… down near zero. But .. it seems that most people come out at the other end feeling more like themselves than ever before.

'I'm more eager than ever to do what I did. I want to do everything. I don't want it to sound soppy but that's the way it is. Try to enjoy the moment. Have a laugh. Swim in the sea. Hug and kiss.

When she thanks fellow cancer sufferers for the thousands of letters she received - the grannies who prayed for her and the little girl who wrote, "We don't want doctors to put needles into you. When are you back on stage?" she says she was shocked by the strength of the response.

Interviewer: What would you say to them, if they are watching this?

Minogue: I love to say: you can get through it. You can.

Why are her fans so enamoured with Minogue? She would freely admit that she is not the greatest singer or dancer and certainly she is no great wit.

It began in 1987 when Pete Waterman, the music producer, got a call from his Hit Factory colleague Mike Stock. "There's a small Antipodean in reception expecting to do something with us," he said.

"She should be so lucky," scoffed Waterman, a refrain which Stock immediately thought might make a good song.

Throughout the next decade she released rave, songs, indie songs and downright weird songs. In magazines and videos she was styled as rock chicks, Japanese call girls, Cote'd Azur beach babes and 1950s starlets.

To each new Kylie more fans swarmed. Women adored her for being the right side of inhumanely beautiful. Singletons sympathized with her miserable love life.

Men responded to her enduring sweetness. She was childlike without being a Lolita, upbeat without being cloying. Above all, she demonstrated the power of sexiness over sleaziness in a world that was beginning to sink in porn.

By the turn of the millennium, however, Minogue was on the rocks and badly needed a hit. Like a phoenix in hot pants, she rose again in one final incarnation: disco showgirl. In 2000 Spinning Around shot to number one. A year later the remorselessly catchy Can't Get You out of My Head topped the charts in 40 countries worldwide.

Then cancer struck, the one look she had never prepared herself for.

The official announcement came on May 17. Three days later Minogue was admitted to the St Francis Xavier Cabrini hospital in Melbourne where a tumour was removed from her left breast in a partial mastectomy.

Minogue remained with her family for the next two months as she underwent twice - weekly radiotherapy sessions. Then she made arrangements to travel to Paris to undergo chemotherapy.

By October last year her weight had dropped to six stone, which even on her minute 5ft lin frame looked horrific. She hired a French nutritionist to halt her body's disappearance.

She tried to stay positive but, thinking she might be running out of time, made a mental list of things to do before the end, including eat langoustine in Portofino and lie in the sea undisturbed by parazzi. Last November she was pronounced too sick to return to Australia for Christmas. After her final session of chemo on December 18 she spent a nerve-racking few weeks waiting for the test results. Were there days she thought she wasn't going to make it? "Absolutely. That was a very difficult time, waiting for the phone to ring or for the doctor to come over. I can hardly believe that I'm here."

Although Minogue got the all-clear in January she faced a further six months of radiation treatments to help to prevent the cancerous cells returning. Ten minute doses each day, five days a week. She returned to Melbourne for the therapy and slowly began to regain her strength.

"When (your hair) starts to grow back it's so thrilling,” she says. "There's an eyelash! There's an eyebrow! You are sure you'll be the one (for whom) it never does."

While recovering she wrote a children's book, Showgirl Princess, which will be published by Puffin in September.

In early June she announced that her cancer was in full remission.

Now she will pick up her tour again in November. "I've got a mountain to climb, but I don't fancy hanging around the bottom of the mountain. I'm not sure I'll be able to do everything I did before. No more quick changes. We'll have slow changes and maybe even a little chair (backstage).

She is well aware that the cancer might return. "I'm not like this all the time," she says. "It's no picnic and I'm still going through it. It's not like, 'Hey, it's over.' I still have medical treatments. I still have check-ups. I'm aware and I do all the things I'm supposed to do to stay on top of things - of it.

"Had I not discovered (the cancer) until a little later the story might have been very different. I was saved, I really was."

(The Sunday Times, UK)