Kylie Minogue’s boyfriend thought she was a “bit off and grumpy” when they first met.
Kylie Minogue
The 52-year-old singer began dating GQ creative director Paul Solomons two years ago, but they had actually met on a photoshoot more than a decade earlier, though the ‘Wow’ hitmaker didn’t remember him.
But Kylie can understand why Paul thought she was “grumpy” as it was shortly before she was diagnosed with breast cancer and she hadn’t been feeling well.
She said: “It was 2004, just before my breast-cancer diagnosis [in 2005] and I remember the shoot. But I also remember not feeling very well a lot of the time that year, which was probably why I seemed grumpy.
“And I wasn’t well, it turned out. My cancer changed so many things. It changed me, it changed my family and it changed the perception of me.”
Kylie has been free of cancer for 14 years but still reads a lot about the subject.
She said: “[At the time] women would come up to me in the street after that and talk about what they were going through…
“I still sit and read women’s stories. I think about that time because it’s a huge part of who I am and it drove me on. You don’t give up. You have to keep going.”
The ‘Spinning Around’ singer began dating Paul after a mutual friend pushed them together and despite initially resisting his attempts at matchmaking, she made a connection the first time they met properly.
She told You magazine: “I was sort of open to dating again, open to everything. I don’t have any rules about what someone should look like, I just like a good guy.
“My friend kept telling me about a guy called Paul who he’d worked with. He had a photo of him and I looked and said he seemed nice. He told me to call him but I said, ‘No.’
“He didn’t let up. We’d go to my local tapas bar and have a glass of wine, and he’d start telling me what a good bloke he was. Unbeknown to me, he was doing the same to Paul and trying to get each of us to ring the other.
“Then, one day, we went to the bar and my friend said, ‘Right, I’m calling him now.’ Two minutes later, Paul was on his way. I wasn’t looking glamorous; I was in a T-shirt and denims. I had no expectations, but he came and we talked, drank wine, laughed and got on.
“What I wanted was a good guy and he was a good guy. We swapped numbers, went on a date. And that was it.”
Tagged in Kylie Minogue