Topp job: ‘Rebels got their medals’
They were rebels, activists, and now they are dames.
Entertainers Jools and Lynda, the Topp Twins, were appointed Dame Companions of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Or as Jools – sorry, Dame Julie Bethridge Topp – puts it: ‘‘The rebels got their medals.’’
Jools and Lynda – that’s now Dame Lynda Bethridge Topp – have been entertaining the nation for more than 30 years and their honours were awarded for ‘‘services to entertainment’’.
But as well as putting smiles on faces with their humorous country tunes, they’ve also been at the forefront of some major social change in New Zealand.
Lynda said the sisters accepted their titles to honour all New Zealanders who fought alongside them to make the country nuclear-free, to reform laws around homosexuality, and against South African apartheid.
Entertainment and politics have never been far apart in the twins’ world. Jools said music and performance were a way to get their message across.
Lynda said their careers had been more of a lifestyle than jobs.
‘‘A lifestyle is all about whether you believe in something, and whether your work fits with the politics in your head.
‘‘And that is a lifestyle,’’ she said. ‘‘Your politics never leave you, your individual politics never leave you, and we’ve just been very lucky that we’ve had a microphone.’’
The twins were born in 1958 in Huntly and grew up on a Waikato dairy farm. After a brief stint in the army, they began performing as a music duo, busking and gigging, first around Christchurch and then Auckland.
They came of age as performers in the early 1980s and were part of protest movements over such issues as Ma¯ori land rights, apartheid, nuclear-free New Zealand and homosexual law reform. Both Jools and Lynda have been openly lesbian since the late 1970s.
A succession of albums through the 1980s established their country-influenced musical sound and found mainstream success that led to a TV show, Do Not Adjust Your Twinset, in the late 1990s, which ran for three seasons and won several awards.
Almost as well-known as the Topps themselves are the characters they’ve played for decades in their shows, in particular Camp Mother and Camp Leader and the blokey Ken and Ken. In 2008, the twins were inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame, and the following year they starred in documentary The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls.