Kylie has always been bigger than her music. Even at the start of her pop career, when she was a one-dim-ensional cherub with about as much depth as a Northern Irish WAG, Kylie's real life was attracting more attention than her little ditties.

Not much has changed in the intervening years — much as the cool kids might like Can't Get You Out of My Head or Wow, nothing she's sung is as beloved by the British public as Kylie herself.

In 1987 Kylie was on the cusp of leaving Australia's biggest TV show, Neighbours, where she played every man's dream mechanic-next-door Charlene Mitchell. Rumours of her real-life affair with co-star Jason Donovan had already made her a gossip column staple (their TV wedding drew in 20 million viewers and made the cover of TIME Australia).

It's hard now to imagine a relationship less scorching than the one between the virginal, sweet-faced Kylie and the vacant young Jason but the tabloids were oddly captivated. Perhaps they caught a peek of the siren Kylie would later become — certainly when the video for her first UK hit I Should Be So Lucky showed her bouncing on a four-poster bed and giggling in a bubble bath, it was regularly observed that Jason was the lucky one.

Kylie has always had a knack — lucky or otherwise — of arriving at hugely interesting points in her personal life just as her work is becoming forgettable. After a string of hit singles such as Especially for You (a duet with Donovan, widely regarded as one of the worst records of the 1980s) and Hand on Your Heart, Kylie's saccharine image was setting her up for regular critical maulings — she was often called "the singing budgie" and her work "inept" or even "majestically awful".

And then she met Michael Hutchence, a man with an image as raunchy and dark as hers was shiny and clean-cut.

Hutchence was probably the first person to re-invent Kylie, though she has of course been through the process numerous times since she met him in 1990.

He told newspapers his favourite pastime was "corrupting Kylie" and as his girlfriend she chopped off her swinging girly locks and stepped out with a bold Edie Sedgewick-esque blonde crop. Her music got more credible too, with tracks like Better the Devil You Know becoming a widely acknowledged dancefloor classic which even gothic darklord Nick Cave called "compelling".

Her drastic new look and attitude, coupled with the suggestion that her sex life had just become X-rated, kept Kylie in the public eye even as her singles sold less and less.

When she left Stock Aitken and Waterman in 1993 Kylie signed to dance label Deconstruction and spent a few years releasing breathless Madonna rip offs (Confide In Me) and weak indie fodder (the Manic Street Preacher collaboration Some Kind of Bliss).

Nick Cave's interest in her — he invited her to duet on Where the Wild Roses Grow, a murder ballad about loving her so much he had to kill her — was bizarre enough to spark some interest, but with her relationship with Hutchence firmly in the past, it looked like Kylie's publicity-pulling powers might be on the wane. She was even in danger of losing her crown as Europe's favourite Antipodean pop star — by 1997 Natalie Imbruglia was hot on her trail.

Enter the tiny gold hotpants. The 2000 album Light Years was full of fun disco frivolities, a vast improvement on the lost Deconstruction years, but the thing that put Kylie back onto the front page of newspapers and magazines was the gold hotpants she wiggled around in for the duration of the Spinning Around video. Never have the minds of so many focussed so much on one woman's backside — even Jennifer Lopez's buttocks have escaped such forensic investigation.

For weeks the British tabloids spent almost every waking hour coming up with bum-related puns ('Kylie's rear is so admirable' and 'Kylie's rock bottom' being just two of the classic results). Kylie herself seemed happy to go along with the notion of herself as an updated version of a 1950s British seaside postcard, satisfying many an adolescent fantasy by posing variously as a naughty nun, a nurse, an air stewardess and a policewoman.

Even when she finally made a truly great record — 2001's Can't Get You Out of my Head (No 1 in 20 countries) — more attention was paid to the weird hoodie get-up she wore in the video than to the song itself.

By 2005 Kylie was an established star who'd fought through huge dips in her career to prove her staying power and was becoming celebrated for her elaborate high-glam live shows.

She had already surpassed her pop-celebrity status and become, as far as the British tabloids were concerned, an (imported) national treasure. So when news of her diagnosis of breast cancer came through it sent shockwaves throughout the country.

Kylie's fragility and fight made her even more loved by the public.

By the time she returned to the stage 18 months later — and announced the sad end of her relationship with Olivier Martinez, the boyfriend she'd allegedly dreamed of marrying and having children with — there was barely a man or woman left in the country who wasn't willing her on. She'd had a terrifying brush with cancer and yet another romance had ended in disappointment and regret.

Along the way Kylie Minogue had progressed from cosy national treasure to tragic heroine, not far behind Princess Diana in British hearts and minds. It is hard to imagine her being toppled from that position now. But the last thing Kylie would want is people feeling sorry for her. She's been having fun dressing up in foxy skin-tight rubber again, trying her hand at yet another pop genre (glam rock this time) and showing up at parties in an array of high fashion outfits.

Her recent live shows are the pinnacle of extravagant high camp, and great fun for it. She's now as much a part of our cultural furniture as Eastenders or fish and chips.

You might not remember the name of her last single (In My Arms) but you've got no chance of ever forgetting Kylie.

Kylie plays the Odyssey Arena on June 26, 27, 29 and 30. Box office 9073 9074.