TROS TV Show

Presenter Reinout Oerlemans interviews Kim Wilde. After the interview she does a lipsynch performance of ‘You came (2006)’.

You still look great.
Thank you, you look pretty damn good yourself.

Thank you, but I’m a little younger. I still know you from the Eighties, we grew up together.
Yeah, absolutely.

Do you still think back about the Eighties, miss Wilde?
Um… I don’t know, I’m thinking very much about today and tomorrow. The Eighties I have very fond memories for, they do seem like a long time ago… Watching those clips was really lovely, I haven’t seen them for a long time. Brings back some great memories.

Because then you were even bigger, you performed together with Michael Jackson for instance?
Sure, yeah…

Where was that?
In ’88 I did a tour with him for a few months, the ‘Bad’ tour, roundabout the same time in fact that ‘You came’ was first out. So that was an amazing experience, watching him, and of course at that time he was at the peak of his success, and, anyway, things change.

Things change. David Bowie, in those days as well?
Yeah, that was great. It was really good, I mean he’s very down to earth, you know he’s an Englishman. He just comes into the dressing room, ‘Hi Kim, are you all righ’ ‘, real Cockney, he’s lovely.

You really grew up in the business because your mother was a singer, I read, with the Vernon Girls. What are the Vernon Girls?
They sort of preceded Pan’s People of Top of the Pops and the all girl bands, singing, dancing, glamour, the whole thing combined. She was in a team of, I don’t know, about 15, 20 girls and she fell in love with my dad Marty Wilde, and then they got married, and they had me and they had my brother, and they’re still married. When they were in their forties, they had two more children, so now I have a 27-year-old sister, called Roxanne, and a 25-year-old brother called Marty, who’s expecting a baby on Christmas day!

Fantastic. Thanks for sharing this information. You talk about Marty Wilde, I had no idea who he is, but we found a clip and he was a big singer as well, he was famous with this song.

(clip of performance of ‘Abergavenny’ shown.)
(Kim laughs)

What do you think?
I’ve never seen that. So funny. Oh dear, yeah, that’s funny. (Laughs)

Are you getting emotional or is it tears from laughter?
Both.

What do you think when you see him like this enjoying himself on stage.
Well he’s a born performer, he just loves it. Next year it’s his 50th anniversary in the music business. And this year it’s my 25th, it’s kind of strange.

Were you meant to be in the pop industry from the day you were born or because of your famous parents?
Well I don’t think there’s any sort of, you can’t assume that because your parents do something you’re gonna follow in their footsteps but certainly being brought up in a musical environment… Our first heroes were Elvis, this is how we grew up in our house. Music was the first thing that we all revered. It became above everything, including education and religion. Music was our religion and music was our education.

But why did you decide to step all the way out of the limelight?
Well ten years ago I got to a point where there were no more challenges left for me in the music industry anymore and I was pretty bored and I felt that the public were pretty bored with me too. It was like an amicable divorce, if there’s ever such a thing. I wanted to get out and see what else Kim Wilde could be, without Wilde. And I went into theatre, really quickly I met my husband…

Yes, I want to go into that because I’m interested in that. So there you were, Kim Wilde, big popstar from the Eighties, you get on stage, getting married, you moved over to the countryside in an old barn, and then I saw when I did some research on you a different Kim Wilde. Because it’s not a popstar anymore. What kind of Kim Wilde was living on the countryside?
She was great because I decided to get out of the music business, concentrate on having some children, trying to have some, then we had them, which was wonderful, and I wanted to make them a garden. That was my very important thing. I wanted to make them a place to grow up in that was beautiful, and sensorial, and somewhere where they could play, have fun, have all their senses activated ,things that looked good, feel good and taste good, so I started to try and make them a garden. And I wasn’t getting very far, so I went back to college and studied it for a little while.  While I was pregnant with Harry, sitting slightly back from the desk, because my tummy was here, doing this writing thing, and learnt a little bit about it. Then I got snapped up by gardening TV…

It’s amazing. I want to show this clip to the audience, because once again, this is not the Kim Wilde I grew up with with funky hairdos and beautiful clothing. This is the Kim Wilde we saw in the BBC show called ‘Garden invaders’.

(Garden Invaders clip shown.)

It looks nice. It looks nice, what about it?
Shortly after that I decided it was time to go back to college and really learn about what I was doing.

But still, in Holland we have Rob and Nico from ‘Eigen huis en tuin’, but I’d rather have Kim Wilde. So you even made a book, ‘Gardening with children’, and it was a big success. And now you’re back in business. We saw you with Nena, I like the song. How was it with Nena? Another icon from the Eighties.
Yeah, it was an amazing surprise to me, because I did the vocals for ‘Anyplace, anywhere, anytime’, went back to England and carried on. I had no intention of doing what she was doing, this major comeback, which subsequently has been amazing, but at the time when I did the vocal, nothing had happened for her career at all. And then my friend Claire who lives here in Linschoten was phoning me up and said ‘Kim, you’re number 1 here, what’s going on?’ and I said ‘You’re joking’. And then the next week she said ‘Kim, you’re still at number 1’. It was a complete surprise, I couldn’t believe it.

And now it’s a total comeback with ‘You came’ of course… You’re 45 years old, you look great but you’re 45 years old, mother of two beautiful children. Why do you want to be back in this terrible business?
It’s a good question. It’s not such a bad business. I guess it’s in my blood. My dad Marty is still doing it, he does a 100 shows a year, I just can’t get it out of my system and it’s time for mum to have some fun. It’s mum time now. I still go home and I have to feed the puppy, sort out the school uniforms…