‘I’M GLAD I STEPPED AWAY’

The X Factor Sophie Heawood

From being bullied on to the breakup that nearly broke her, DANNII MINOGUE tells what made her move 10,000 miles to her Aussie hometown to bring up her son. And why it’s the best decision she’s ever made

ife sometimes teaches you a lesson that you have to learn more than once but, at the age of 49, Dannii Minogue didn’t expect that lesson to be long division. ‘God, I hate teaching maths,’ she says, over a video chat from Melbourne, Australia, where one of the world’s longest lockdowns is over for now, but where she has been very busy trying to homeschool her ten-year-old son Ethan while also working on her petite fashion range and television career.

‘Of course, I don’t use long division every day, so there are just so many things I’ve forgotten about. It’s not up in here,’ she admits, tapping her head, shaking it. ‘I don’t have it. And the terminology and the way they teach it is different from when we learned it. Then they’ll say,’ she puts on a very funny, softly patronising voice, “‘Just let your child discover the way they want to learn,” and I’m like, aargh, just let me get through today’s work! Teaching is not the job for me. It was interesting, though – my frustration with him, his frustration with me. I kept saying to him, “I’m doing my best but I suck at this.”’

I’m speaking to Dannii from a cold and dark London, where she used to live, while sunlight and birdsong stream through the shutters of her Melbourne home, where she is now based near her extended family. Homeschooling might have been a mess but she seems noticeably at peace with herself and able to laugh at it all. In fact, she cuts a completely different figure from the one who left the UK and her job as a judge on The X Factor in 2011 after arguments and stress. That Dannii had also become really ill with a thyroid condition and found her hair falling out in clumps after she had a baby with her partner Kris Smith in 2010 then split up with him soon after.

He said on I’m A Celebrity… Australia that it ‘absolutely ripped my heart out, but it was for the best’ because they hadn’t wanted their son to grow up in an environment that could become bitter or resentful. They all live in Australia, where he has two further children with his new partner. Dannii has been in a relationship with her music producer partner Adrian Newman ‘for eight years now’, she says, and tells me that things are settled.

Plus, her sister Kylie, who is over in Australia, too, having recently flown home. ‘We’ve been following the news from the UK every day and we know how hard it’s been over

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