Heidi Klum spricht über ihre Wechseljahre. Narendra Modi schenkt Giorgia Meloni Toffees. Und Kylie Minogue enthüllt, dass sie 2021 eine zweite Brustkrebsdiagnose erhalten hat.

In new Netflix documentary, pop superstar says she ‘got through it, again’, referring back to successful treatment for breast cancer in 2005

• TV review: Kylie – this refreshingly raw, real encounter with pop royalty will move you to tears

Kylie Minogue has revealed that in early 2021 she was diagnosed with cancer for a second time, after diagnosis and successful treatment for breast cancer in 2005.

The pop star discussed the previously unannounced diagnosis in a new Netflix documentary entitled Kylie, available from today. “My second cancer diagnosis was in early 2021. I was able to keep that to myself … Not like the first time,” she said, referring to her highly publicised first treatment.

This affecting anti-hagiography traces the ascent of a bona fide superstar, featuring interviews with Nick Cave, Dannii, Jason Donovan – and the icon herself making a shocking cancer revelation

• News: Kylie Minogue announces she had second cancer diagnosis in 2021

Beyond the sequins, feathers and gold hotpants, the stories of the most enduring pop megastars tend to be ones of jaw-dropping grit and undimmable power. Especially when they’re women. So it is with Kylie: pint-sized seller of over 80m records, singer of two of the greatest pop bangers of all time (Can’t Get You Out of My Head and Padam Padam, obviously), and the reticent subject of this increasingly intimate and, finally, profoundly moving three-part Netflix documentary. What starts as a bog-standard run-through of Kylie’s ascent to superstardom – an excess of Pete Waterman, Neighbours clips and virulent 1990s sexism – ends with a disclosure that moves me to tears.

It comes in the final 10 minutes. It’s 2023: a euphoric high point in Kylie’s career. Padam Padam, the first single from Kylie’s 16th album, Tension, has just been released. Then the words “One More Thing” flash across a black screen. Cut to present-day Kylie arriving at the studio, singing songs from Tension with her longstanding team of British songwriters. “There’s a song called Story … ” she says to director Michael Harte (also the editor of Netflix’s Beckham), who shot the documentary over two years. Kylie, who is notoriously private, falters. Her songwriting partner of more than 25 years, Richard “Biff” Stannard, takes her hand. She starts to cry as she divulges what Story is really about: her second cancer diagnosis, in early 2021.

Exclusive song for online retailer prevents a hat trick of Christmas No 1s for Wham!, as Kylie becomes first woman to secure UK No 1 singles in four different decades

Kylie Minogue has scored her first UK Christmas No 1, and eighth No 1 single overall, with the song Xmas.

She beat competition from Wham!’s mega-streaming Last Christmas, which has been Christmas No 1 for the past two years: it was last week’s chart-topper but drops to No 2. Also in the race was Lullaby from the charity campaign Together for Palestine, which reached No 5.

He wrote poems named after Kylie songs and named his collection of erotic fiction after her indie album. He even loved the B-sides. So what did the avant garde writer find so inspiring about the mini Melbourne marvel?

Kevin Killian was obsessed with stars. Not in a metaphysical sense, like the grand lineage of poets that went before him, but the celebrity kind. Some were A-listers – he kept a vast database on Julia Roberts – and some more obscure. In 2000, taken by the work of cult literary sensation JT LeRoy, and confusion about their identity, Killian gave public readings of their work in San Francisco, where he had lived for 20 years after moving from New York. He would also turn unknown poets into local celebrities, hosting poetry events and making rapturous introductions to crowds that were occasionally outnumbered by the people on stage. “Anyone he admired was an A-lister,” says poet and friend, Evan Kennedy, “especially unknown poets. He’d enthuse about someone, and I’d say ‘Who?’ Kevin engaged the Bay Area poetry scene like Warhol did his Factory – but unlike Warhol, it wasn’t centred around him or his work.”

Killian – a figure in San Francisco’s New Narrative movement, alongside writers such as Kathy Acker and Robert Glück – saved his biggest celebrity obsession, however, for Kylie Minogue. She ran through his work like letters in a stick of rock. In 2008, he published Action Kylie, a poetry collection that included works named after Kylie songs (Slow, Spinning Around, Your Disco Needs You), and more abstract scenarios, such as the lovelorn An Audience with Kylie Minogue, in which lyrics from Fever intertwine with the mundanity of Love Hearts sweets. A year later, in 2009, Killian published Impossible Princess, an award-winning collection of gay erotic fiction named after Kylie’s misunderstood 1997 opus. She’d crop up elsewhere too, reflecting Killian’s bonafides as a proper fan. Tightrope, from 2014’s Tweaky Village collection, is named after a Kylie B-side, and highlights how “All her best songs saved as B-sides or just leaked on to the internet, where they live on as fan favourites”.