Royal Fizzler

The Age

Thursday February 14, 2008

Marieke Hardy

KYLIE MINOGUE really is the closest thing we've got to an official royal in Australia, isn't she? We follow her every move, make murmuringly polite comments about her outfits even when someone should quite clearly tackle her to the ground and refuse to let her leave the house without first changing and running a comb through her hair, and tut paternally every time she's seen with that diminutive cur of a Frenchman (the man is barely a head taller than her and she's about the size of a peanut. Face it, he's no larger than a fist). Even when la Minogue accidentally releases some kind of tinky-tink slice of dance music best left in the Eurovision draft bin we simply look in the other direction until she's finished being lewd with her hips and carry on earnestly discussing how I Should Be So Lucky is a piece of post-modern poetry and how dishy it was when she teamed up with Nicholas "Lord Voldemort" Cave and he pretended to smash her head in with a rock. In short, we forgive her all her trespasses. Though when it comes to one-hour comedy specials it's perhaps time to give her a gentle tap on the shoulder and suggest she sit this one out, particularly if last week's The Kylie Show (Tuesday on Seven) was anything to go by.

Whose idea was this ham-fisted panto of fizz? Was it entirely necessary to foist another side of K.M. onto the world when we're already wholly enamoured with her toothsome visage? Why couldn't they just let us quietly admire her wee spin dance routines and new range of bedlinen from afar without suddenly thrusting us into an episode of Rohan and Martin's Laugh-In? Honestly, from the opening clip miming Can't Get You Out Of My Head, sporting weird crayon eyebrows and the sort of white pantsuit that would get you in trouble if you ever ordered a napolitana, to the carob-flavoured comedy sketches, this was an entire exercise in poorly written camp. The much-anticipated reunion with Jason Donovan in a corridor was simply a stagey, high school in-joke where Donovan pretended to have forgotten her (LOL) and referred to her as "Keely" while waving his autobiography around. Following were a few more "comic bites" involving Kylie exchanging blows with her Picasso-faced sister and a piece with a pair of nuns visiting a dressing-room and finding Kylie immersed in a horse race, which was simply trite. The only thing missing was Goldie Hawn leaping out of a wall wearing a bikini and demanding that at some stage throughout the evening we sock it to her. I don't mind fluff, I honestly don't. It's when it's enormously unfunny that I grow offended and start threatening violence. Either get Kylie some new writers or keep her confined to the recording booth until she emerges with a new set of "beats" to distract us. Did you know she's currently sporting a handbag made out of botoxed crocodile skin? Not particularly relevant, just a bit repulsive and worth musing over. Don't say I never drop interesting dinner party information into this column.

Over on Channel Nine, the "other" regal clan we know and love were giving us a behind-the-scenes look of their own with last Monday's A Year With The Royal Family. Presumably designed as some kind of PR exercise for HRH Liz Squared, it documented a rather busy day or two for the Windsors as Ma'am posed for famed photographer Annie Leibovitz and Sir ambled around the grounds presumably making cheerily patronising comments to the ground staff, before the pair of them were bundled into some kind of royal plane and sent into the royal sky to make a royal visit to the royal White House. Laura Bush showed us the room Ma and Pa Windsor would sleep in (it has "priddy windehrs", apparently), Tony Blair hovered uncomfortably, and George W. Bush was briefed by an intern carrying a red laser pen, which you could just tell he was busting a nut to have a turn on. People took photographs and clapped, several young children tremblingly handed over bunches of flowers, and Washington put on a bang-up dinner so HRH could make a long-winded speech and bore everyone to tears.

You could hardly call it behind-the-scenes proper. Most of the hour was taken up with interviews on behalf of the waitstaff and assistants, who spoke in hushed tones about which type of roast beef tartlets Her Maj favours when entertaining Don Johnson and Jerry Hall and cringed in terror every time someone remotely high up strode into the room wearing a severe expression. It's not as though we saw the Queen slothing about in her PJs with a hand stuffed down her dacks. She simply went about her day and looked wholly irritated by the camera crews flitting about like high-tech mosquitoes.

"She's like everybody's grandmother on their best behaviour," observed one particularly thick American gent, who was either third-generation in the de Vil family or simply not paying attention. Elizabeth 2 came across as a prim-lipped, icy, wholly disagreeable old biddy and seemed to provide reason alone for this island of ours to meander off into independence and become a republic. Throw her into a few sketches with Jason Donovan and a fright wig and the result would no doubt be the same.

These royal people are mysteries for a reason. Keep it that way.

mhardy@access.fairfax.com.au