As a teenager, Dannii Minogue was convinced she had been given the eye by Boy George.

Now, years later, she finds herself his celebrity equal.

The Aussie singing star, who arrives in Bradford this month, as part of her UK tour, shared the stage with Boy George in the sumptuous surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall earlier this summer.

But she still has vivid memories of an earlier encounter.

"I remember the first big concert I went to in Australia was Culture Club," said Dannii, who's now 26.

"I remember being in the audience with all these screaming girls and shouting to my friends 'He looked at me!'

"Now after having played on so many big stages, I know that after the first five rows everything just goes completely black and you can't see anything."

It was hard to imagine then that the unknown Australian girl would become every bit as big a global star as Boy George himself, even though she started on her path to fame at the tender age of seven.

One of her earliest roles was in the Australian wartime drama The Sullivans which enjoyed cult status when it was screened in this country.

"I played a young girl who was left behind when her father went off to war and other people had to look after her. The Sullivans was huge. It just went on for years," said Dannii.

Dannii now realises she was too young to appreciate fully what she was involved in but still says being in a show like The Sullivans stood her in good stead.

"Any exposure like, any training when you get an opportunity to learn and to work with real professionals can only be a good thing," she said.

Dannii and her sister Kylie have both made it big time - but, unusually, without coming from a showbiz background.

"Mum used to be a dancer before she met dad but she gave that up at 19 and never became professional and that was about it," said Dannii.

"What happened was just that Kylie and I were always singing and dancing around the house and putting on shows for mum and dad and that sort of thing."

Eventually, their parents lined them up to show off their burgeoning talents to some people they knew who worked for the all-powerful Grundy corporation which has been behind most of Australia's best-known television shows.

By all accounts, it was as much to humour them as anything, but the precocious sisters were so impressive that they were soon on their way to TV stardom. Dannii also appeared in another Aussie drama series called Skyways and had turned professional by the time she was 11, taking part in Australian 10 Network's prime time variety show Young Talent Time.

As a teenager she starred in All The Way and then landed a role in the soap Home and Away and the feature film Secrets - and she launched her own range of clothing at the age of 17.

It was Home and Away that was her really big break. It helped her to win the Best Personality on Australian TV and Best New Star of 1989 awards voted by readers of Australian TV Hits magazine and, more importantly, first brought her to the attention of European audiences.

In recent years she has become a familiar face presenting TV shows in Britain, ranging from the BBC's Electric Circus and Live and Kicking to ITV's It's Not Just Saturday and Scoop and Channel 4's Big Breakfast.

Dannii is now a UK resident and finds it a tricky balancing act keeping her Australian fans happy while working on the other side of the world.

"I've spent a lot of time here and I've been living here for a few years now. I've had a lot of international exposure from Home and Away and I've done a lot of television here now," she said.

"In Australia they sometimes feel a bit excluded and ask me 'Why don't you come here and tour?'

"It's difficult because it's a bigger market over here in Britain."

Immediately before arriving back in Britain for her tour, fans Down Under did have an extended chance to see their favourite in action, though. Dannii has just completed a stint in the musical Grease.

"I've just been back in Australia for five months for the show. We've played to half a million people in the run so it was a really massive thing for me to do," she said.

Now Dannii is concentrating on her own pop career. It was as long ago as 1991 that she enjoyed her first Top 40 hit with Love and Kisses. After a three-year absence from the record industry, she came back with a bang recently with the single All I Wanna Do making the Top Five and a successful album called Girl.

But for all her chart experience, a live tour on this scale is new territory for Dannii.

"The live show will be kind of a lot of music from the Girl album. It's a bit more clubby and dance-orientated compared to what I've done before," she said.

"I have one of the remixers I've worked with on tour with us. We will have computer-generated sounds and we will have a live band as well. We will also be doing some acoustic stuff and there are going to be some great sets and costumes."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.