Kylie. Julie Aspinall
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.
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.
Kylie’s first real love, Jason Sean Donovan, was born on 1 June 1968 to Terrance, an actor, and Sue McIntosh, a newsreader. Unlike Kylie, who had a very stable family background, Jason came from a broken home. His parents parted while he was still very young and from then on he spent most of his time with his father.
Like Kylie, however, Jason started learning his trade while still a toddler, encouraged by his father, just as Kylie had been by her mother. He started taking piano lessons very early on and joined the Australian Choir at the age of five. By the time he was 11 he had taken part in Skyways, where he met Kylie: ‘The first time I met Kylie Minogue, I thought, what a small person – and she still is!’ he recalled as a Neighbours star. Soon after that, the young Donovan made appearances in I Can Jump Puddles and Golden Pennies. Meanwhile, he was at school at Spring Road School in Malvern, where he was brought up, followed by a period at De La Salle, a Catholic high school. He spent much of his youth following his father around film sets, and show business was firmly in the Donovan blood, but Jason actually turned down the role of Danny in Neighbours in order to finish school. Shortly afterwards he was offered the part of Scott, and televisual history was made. And very soon after that, the two co-stars had fallen in love.
Kylie was later to dismiss their time together as unimportant, a fling between teenage sweethearts, but the relationship lasted for nearly four years and was initially extremely happy for both of them. The two became a couple in 1986, both happily convinced that the other was ‘the one’. But with hindsight, there were already clear differences between them that might have indicated that the relationship was doomed from the start. Yes, they were both blonde, cute, the same age and both starred in Neighbours and became singers, but that is where the similarities ended. For a start, Jason did not start taking drugs in the 1990s when he tired of his clean-living image, as is often thought to be the case: rather, he smoked dope regularly even back then. Ironically, given that her next boyfriend was to be Michael Hutchence, Kylie hated his habit and feared that the press would run with the story.
Moreover, although it was Jason who was first cast as a star in Neighbours, with Kylie only brought in initially for a few weeks, it was really Kylie who was the ambitious one. Kylie has a tendency to rely on her menfolk for moral support, with the result that she is often seen as less independent than she really is, but behind that frail image, there lurks a soul of steel. She is ambitious, she always has been ambitious and she has always gone all out to get what she wants. The same can not be said of Jason. Would he have ever left Ramsay Street when his fame was at its height? he was once asked. ‘Go and live in a caravan by the ocean with the surfboards tied to the roof? Yeah, I’d have loved that,’ came the reply. ‘I could have been very happy living like that and waiting for the surf. Maybe I will, one day.’
Kylie, who was present at the time, added, ‘Yes, that’s Jason for you.’ But it certainly wasn’t Kylie. She wasn’t giving up that hard-won success without a struggle and hanging about waiting for the surf was a long way off her agenda. ‘Just don’t say I look as though I’ve spent a lot of time outdoors or in the sun,’ she said once, ‘because I’ve spent most of the last couple of years in some studio or another.’
She did have time for the odd holiday, however, and one of her breaks led to rumours that Kylie and Jason were even closer off screen than they were on. In 1988, the couple were pictured on holiday in Bali. Kylie was topless. ‘Ah ha!’ said the world’s press. ‘So they really are a couple!’ Jason immediately went on the defensive. ‘Kylie can still be my friend without being my lover,’ he argued unconvincingly.
‘We went on holidays together because my mates didn’t have any time off, but Kylie had the same schedule as me,’ Jason continued. ‘No offence to Kylie, but if I was to come home and see her every night and be with her 24 hours a day, I couldn’t cope for very long. It’s not the way I’d like things to turn out and I think Kylie feels the same. It’s hard enough working that closely together on screen.’
Their fellow holiday makers were unimpressed by