Dannii Minogue fears she could have died over ‘brutal’ comparisons to sister Kylie

Dannii Minogue has looked back on what it was like to arrive in the UK at the age of 19 (Picture: Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

Dannii Minogue is confident she ‘wouldn’t be alive now’ if she wasn’t ‘mentally strong’ enough to cope with constant comparison to her sister Kylie Minogue.

The 53-year-old singer and TV presenter has reflected on ‘brutal’ body comparisons people made between her and older sister Kylie, 56, admitting they lasted years.

‘The hardest time I had was not long after I arrived in the UK, photographers were literally throwing themselves on the ground to get angles and shoot up your dress and skirt. It was horrendous. I was 19 when I arrived,’ Dannii recalled.

Speaking on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast, the Home and Away star explained: ‘I’ve said this to my friends, “I know that, if I wasn’t mentally strong and I did have any kind of eating disorder or something, I wouldn’t be alive now.” That is fact.

‘It was so brutal, and it went on for years.’

The Perfection hitmaker has a curvier body shape than her sibling, and recalled it was hard to deal with so many ‘nasty comments’ when ‘slim’ was the only body shape ‘accepted’ in their 90s heyday.

She said: ‘I was compared to my sister, who’s always had a completely different body shape our entire lives.

She was compared to her sister Kylie (Picture: Christie Goodwin/Getty Images)

‘I wasn’t living up to her body. At the time, the only body shape that was accepted was slim.

‘I was a square trying to fit into a hole. You read back now how nasty the comments were.’

While Dannii suffered through it at the time, the experience caught up with her later on in life.

‘It did have a delayed effect later on. I looked back with time to reflect and breathe, and I felt like an idiot,’ Dannii said.

‘Why did I stay in that position where I allowed that to happen? But it was the industry.

‘If you wanted that job as a female pop singer in the 90s, this is what it looks like,’ she added, explaining that she viewed this treatment as a condition of having her career.

‘Looking back I’m angry with myself, mad. But proud of myself, what else could I do?’ she asked.  

Despite the body bashing, Dannii went on to achieve plenty of success in her career, including nine UK top 10 songs, and she also joined the panel of TV talent show The X Factor around its peak.

Dani recalled the hardest moments of her life in the recent Happy Place podcast appearance (Picture: Tim Roney/Getty Images)

Dannii was a judge for four series, from 2007 to 2010, but eventually realised she ‘didn’t want to be a part of it any more’, and she ‘dug deep’ before announcing her departure.

She explained: ‘On my last season of X Factor, 20 million people watched the final, but I just got to a point where I didn’t want to be a part of it any more.’

It still was an ‘incredible experience’, Dannii said, but added: ‘I dug deep into myself and found some strength [to quit].’

She concluded: ‘I thought, this show is going that way. In my soul, I’m going in a completely different direction.’

Another tough experience Dannii recalled in the podcast happened when her marriage to Julian McMahon ended in 1995.

Dannii credits her family for getting her through the tough times (Picture: Sam Tabone/Getty Images)

‘When my marriage all fell apart it wasn’t just being brokenhearted, it was being broke,’ she revealed.

‘I had no money in the bank, I was borrowing money from my family and trying to make it work and dealing with an industry that was very, very tough. That was the darkest, hardest time I’ve been through.’

The only thing that got her through the rough years, Dannii said, was her strong family support system.  

On welcoming her child Ethan Smith in 2010, Dannii moved back to Australia from the UK.

‘I had my baby and I wanted to be around my family,’ Dannii explained, saying her instinct was to to cocoon for a while with her nearest and dearest, despite fears for her career.

Although she took a step back, the Neighbours star’s working life continues to flourish in her fifties.

She is currently working on BBC Three’s I Kissed A Boy; a show which she says it the first she’s been involved in to properly look after her mental health.

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