Beautiful British singing star Kim Wilde has found love in the arms of an English college students 10 years her junior. Kim, 32, confessed to the romance during her recent tour to promote a greatest hits album, Singles Collection 1981-1993. Although she won’t name her new boyfriend, Kim says she is “incredibly happy”, and that the relationship follows a string of affairs with “emotional casualties”.
The couple met in January at a European ski resort. “He is studying psychology and business, although he doesn’t know what he’ll do after that. He has a very open mind”, she says. “He is someone who is a very happy person. The age difference doesn’t worry me at all. Maybe the UK press would make a big deal out of it. We’re just very happy.”
When Kim first burst on to the music scene in 1981 with the hit single Kids In America, she was described as everything from a blonde bombshell to the new Brigitte Bardot. Since then, she has sold 11 million singles and six million albums and is the most successful British female solo artist ever. She says turning 30 brought a newfound maturity and a need to assess her life.
“I used to give myself a real hard time in my 20s. I was very self-critical. In retrospect I realise I didn’t really know myself”, she says. “So I kept having all these unfortunate encounters. I was always with these guys who were really unhappy, real emotional casualties. For a long time I kept thinking, ‘Why am I with these people?’. They were such downers and I couldn’t work out why. I wanted someone who was centred and calm and had an optimistic outlook on life, and eventually I had to look at myself, and realise I was none of these things myself. So I started to change the way I felt about myself. There’s nothing very easy about doing that. I worked hard for it. It’s a struggle for everyone, but once you do it, your life really does improve.
“I just think it’s a shame that you learn nothing about human psychology at school. They teach you nothing about your life and those problems, so you spend all these years trying to find very simple truths.”
The success of Kim’s current single, If I Can’t Have You, has encouraged her to tour Australia early next year. “I’ve discovered a confidence that I wish I’d had at the beginning and that’s quite exciting for me”, she says. “It’s making a big difference in my personal life and now I’m transforming that into my professional life. Part of that is getting out for more concerts. I think now is the perfect time to do that.”