Pop singer Kylie Minogue has been diagnosed with breast cancer and has postponed her Australian and Asian tour, her management said yesterday.
Minogue (36) is Australia's biggest music star, rising from beginnings as a child actress on the television soap Neighbours to international stardom as one of the world's top pop singers.
The Frontier Touring Company said the Australian singer was diagnosed with "early breast cancer" while visiting family in Melbourne this week.
She was due to start her Australian concerts tomorrow before setting out on an Asia tour, and said she was sorry to disappoint her fans.
"Nevertheless, hopefully all will work out fine and I'll be back with you all again soon," Minogue said in a statement.
"She will undergo immediate treatment and consequently her Australian tour will not be able to proceed as planned," the company said in a statement. It added that her Asian tour had also been indefinitely postponed.
In 2002, one of Minogue's bras sold for $6,880 in London at an auction to raise money for breast-cancer awareness. Minogue has also worked to raise awareness of prostate cancer, after her father was diagnosed with it.
Australian concert promoter and long-time friend Michael Gudinski said Minogue would immediately undergo treatment.
"It was diagnosed this morning. She is a pretty fit, strong girl. I'm hoping and praying because the doctor found it so early that everything will be okay. Our thoughts, and I'm sure all the legions of Kylie's fans, will be with her all the way," he told reporters.
The diminutive Minogue has become a music icon around the world through her ability to continually update her image from the girl-next-door in the 1980s to today's sexy, but innocent, pop princess.
Her acting career took off in 1986 as the teenage "Charlene" in the Australian soap Neighbours, which allowed her to launch a singing career.
She released a remake of Locomotion in Britain in 1988 and her second single, I Should Be So Lucky, went to number one in the British pop charts and stayed there for five weeks.
Over the years her career has hit rocky patches but each time Minogue, reknowned for her hard work and drive, bounced back.
She has had a series of high-profile relationships, at one stage dating Australian rock singer Michael Hutchence, who was found hanged in a Sydney hotel.
Minogue is probably almost as famous for her bottom as her singing since wearing gold hotpants in the raunchy video for Spinning Around. -(Reuters)