WHO ARE YOU KIDDING, KYLIE?

She’s the pop star who’s always with a man and has talked of wedded bliss — yet, at 50, now claims marriage isn’t for her. No wonder fellow Aussie AMANDA PLATELL says ...

Kylie MiNOGUe has given up on marriage. That’s right. The princess of pop and serial monogamist who, only last year, talked excitedly about the prospect of becoming a wife, has been left so bruised by her chequered love life that she has concluded the bridal path simply ‘isn’t for her’.

‘i never thought i’d get married,’ she told Red magazine. ‘Just going through “being engaged” seems like an experiment, because i’d never as a girl or in all my life had a vision of getting married.’

For those of us who fondly remember her as Charlene — a bridal vision of meringue puff dress and unruly curls as she wed Neighbours co-star Scott (played by her first lover, Jason Donovan) — her words come as something of a shock.

Could this be the same Kylie who joyfully declared her love for Joshua Sasse, the little-known British actor from whom she split last year after telling all who would listen that he was ‘The One’?

Despite their age gap (she is nearly 50 to his 30), Kylie believed they were on the brink of marriage — her first. ‘i go all gooey at the mention of him,’ she said.

But there were rumours that he was yet another man of the straying — not staying — variety. And months before their impending nuptials, Kylie, suspecting him of infidelity, ended their 18-month relationship. Devastated, she fled to Thailand to ‘rebuild herself’.

This is her fifth failed long-term relationship — not to mention a host of fleeting romances — and it’s entirely understandable she should want to put some distance between her and the latest unedifying chapter of her love life.

But for Kylie to say, ‘i never thought i would get married. i never had it as a goal’ is simply a case of rewriting history.

Who do you think you’re kidding, Kylie?

LIKEthe pop princess she has become, Kylie imagines she can wave a magic wand and rewrite her troubled love life. As though marriage was never her desire.

With apologies to one of her greatest hits, that’s a notion i just can’t get out of my head.

Throughout all her long-term relationships, Kylie has been a one-man woman.

She admits throwing herself into her relationships: ‘ With a boyfriend, i go all out,’ she has said. Then, it seems, they bail out.

How different it might have been had she stayed with Jason. But she dumped the boy-next- door for a real bad boy, iNXS singer Michael Hutchence. He was magnificently sexual, malevolently louche . . . a genuine rock icon. And he was Kylie’s path along a string of men who, even to the casual eye, were not the keeping kind.

Unable to satisfy Hutchence’s passions — she said she was sure some of the sexual antics they got up to were ‘illegal’ — he left her for TV host Paula yates.

Kylie’s next long-term love was devastatingly handsome French actor Olivier Martinez. But equally devastating was her diagnosis with breast cancer. He was her rock during the gruelling treatment that followed.

There were high hopes of a wedding, but after five years this relationship, too, hit the rocks, with Martinez leaving her for Bond girl Halle Berry.

But like an eveready battery, Kylie kept on going on, looking for love. Serious contender No 4 was Spanish model Andres Velencoso, a decade her junior.

The romance lasted a full fiveyears before that old showbiz chestnut — ‘ conflicting work schedules’ — ended it.

Then came cad Sasse. And while we can put this heartbreak down to lousy, cheating men, Kylie must share some blame. As the proverb says, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Why was she still choosing men with ‘i’ll break your heart’ written all over their pretty-boy faces? By all accounts Kylie is the same giggling, glass overflowing girl who beguiled us in Neighbours.

Her career is a triumph of tenacity over talent. No trace of a diva here. in a 30-year music career, barely a bad word has been written about her. So why is the woman who has made 13 studio albums, had 70 million sales and is worth a cool £50 million, so perpetually unlucky in love?

Pictures on the cover of Red magazine show a woman for whom it can truly be said that age has not withered. With her flowing blonde locks and girlish figure, she looks closer to 30 than 50.

But there is a price for defying the years. While most men crave a semblance of normality, there can be none with workaholic Kylie.

Her interview this week coincides with the release of her new album, Golden, which has earned faintly favourable reviews. A world tour is planned for next year.

And while it remains hard for women to believe, the horrible truth is you can’t have a global career and a happy marriage.

Few females succeed at the top of any demanding profession without their men being content to walk two steps behind. And this diminutive star casts quite a shadow over any man’s life.

Kylie, don’t give up on marriage. And don’t fool us into thinking that you will. Just give up on feckless, second-rate men.