Let this sink in for a minute. Twenty million people watched the 1987 Neighbours wedding episode where Scott (Jason Donovan) made an honest woman of charming car mechanic Charlene (Kylie Minogue).

No surprise really, given everyone was already in love with Kylie. Minogue had graduated to Neighbours stardom from various parts on Australian TV, including a spot in the ruination of any sick day, The Waltons, but music was her first love. Her hi-NRG redo of Little Eva’s ‘Locomotion’ was released the week after “the wedding” and became the best-selling single of the decade down under.

Graduating to ’80s pop overlords Stock, Aiken & Waterman’s orbit, a song they wrote and recorded in under 40 minutes hit the top spot in seven countries, including the UK. ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ heralded the arrival of Kylie as pop princess. She wasn’t too taken with the cut of her producers’ collective jib, but her first two albums released by the SAW stable, Kylie (1980) and Enjoy Yourself (1989), sold like cold cures. There was also, may the Lord bless us and save us, ‘Especially For You’, her chart-eating duet with on-screen beau Jason Donovan. It was inescapable in 1989 and, rumour had it, could only be killed by fire.

According to the woman herself, it was around album #3, 1989’s Rhythm Of Love, that her own personality, rather than that of the lads behind the desk, started to come out. On the surface, ‘Better The Devil You Know’ was more of the same auld burrow-into-your-lug-like-a-tic fluff, but it caught the ear of fellow Aussie Nick Cave, who apparently thought it “one of pop music’s most violent and distressing lyrics”. She was also displaying a more grown-up image in her videos, including the first appearance of the hot pants that would later become her trademark.

While it would be insulting and wrong to credit this change in direction to the influence of a man, Kylie’s relationship with INXS heartthrob Michael Hutchence, a demigod capable of impregnating ordinary mortals with a glance, did alter how the public saw her. 2019’s Mystify documentary shows a young couple very much in love, contrary to what any naysayers might have suspected.

Finally, after the relatively poor performance of Let’s Get To It, Kylie got shot of SAW, signed with Deconstruction Records, and released the more grown-up dance music of 1994’s Kylie Minogue album. The following year saw Mr Cave’s wish fulfilled, when Kylie ran away with their duet ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’, the highlight of his Murder Ballads album.

“I had a quiet obsession with her for about six years,” Cave said. Incidentally, they first sang the song together in public at the 1995 Féile Festival in Cork, an ancient ancestor of the Electric Picnic, which is only right and proper.

1997’s Impossible Princess saw her branch even further afield, working with both Japanese musician Towa Tei and Manic Street Preachers (if ‘Some Kind Of Bliss’ had been released as a Manics single, indie boys would be falling over themselves), but she dwarfed this with 2000’s solid gold belter ‘Spinning Around’, a record that could fill a dancefloor at a funeral. The video and those second-hand hotpants? It would be foolish of me to even contemplate a comment but, suffice to say, it’s always an enjoyable watch.

“Ha!” Queen Kylie (probably) laughed. “If you thought that was good, try this!” ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ is just ridiculously great, with a groove that the likes of Daft Punk would hack off a limb for. It went to number one everywhere and sold in the millions. Its BRIT-award winning parent album, Fever, has classics (‘Love At First Sight’, ‘In Your Eyes’, and the Grammy-winning ‘Come Into My World’) falling out of its pockets, and her purple patch continued with the majestic ‘Slow’ (the one with the swimming pool video) in 2003.

Refusing to even let a cancer diagnosis slow her down, Kylie finally made good on her promise to play Glastonbury, performing a spectacular set to a record-breaking crowd in 2019, with guest appearances from both Nick Cave and Chris Martin. The hits (‘2 Hearts’, ‘All The Lovers’, ‘Timebomb’) kept coming in the intervening years (she’s had more ‘Best Ofs’ than most acts have albums), and last year’s ‘Padam Padam’ won her a second Grammy. If middle age was when she was supposed to slow down then, thankfully, nobody told her.

But Kylie isn’t just about the music. Alright, given what we’ve seen of her acting in such cinematic classics as Street Fighter and San Andreas, she’s hardly likely to give Meryl Streep sleepless nights, but when it comes to business, she’s proven herself extremely canny.

Aside from an ever more spectacular series of tours, which always moved tickets even if record sales were going through a lull, she’s put her name to books, a perfume (Darling), wine, her own brand of underwear called (of course) Love Kylie, and even Kylie-branded home furnishings. She also took talent show money, appearing as a judge on The Voice UK, although that’s akin to a Lamborghini trying to decide which Morris Minor is the best one. Best of all, she brought a successful court action against one of those dreadful Kardashians who dared to try trademark her name.

She’s won more awards than Daniel Day-Lewis, she’s a gay icon (“There’s been no tragedy in my life, only tragic outfits”), a fashion icon and a music icon who proved them all wrong, and she did all that while sensibly keeping her private life private. Little wonder Time included her in their ‘100 Most Influential People of 2024’.

And now for perhaps her greatest honour, the closing slot on the main stage of Electric Picnic. It is, without a scintilla of doubt, going to be the party of the weekend, because she’s got more bangers than a fireworks factory, more hits than a barndoor in a hail storm, and more style than the rest of the pop pantheon put together. Ladies and gentlemen, Kylie Bloody Minogue!