There Once Was An Ugly Duckling...

Kim Wilde may seem like just a dumb blonde who struck it lucky. But behind the pouting lips and bleached hair lurks a mousy-haired giant who wants to be taken seriously for a change.

Kim tells us about all the agonising years she spent worrying about her enormous feet and trying to make herself look glamorous - and why she sometimes wishes she'd never bothered:

"I've never been at all happy with the way I look. when I was a teenager I was convinced that I was incredibly ugly because I was so tall and had big feet.

"When I was fifteen, all my friends were 5ft. and I was 5ft.4ins; they all had size 5 feet and mine were size 7.

"To make matters even worse, I had horrible-looking hair. Mousy coloured and very thick.

"At that time I wanted to look like Olivia Newton John or Lyndsay de Paul, so I started experimenting, with make-up and then, when I was sixteen, I had my hair cut in roughly the same style that it is today. I took the idea from a picture of Linda McCartney. I hoped that it would make me look a bit rebellious.

"But even so I still felt a bit like an ugly duckling waiting to turn into a swan.

"And then, when I was eighteen I suddenly came to the conclusion that maybe I didn't look that awful after all. At last I had managed to come to terms with my feet!

"The trouble was that, when I was younger I used to try to follow all the same fashions as the other girls and my feet always made me look ridiculous.

"When platform soles came in I started wearing them. Now, size 5 platforms look quite cute. But size 7 platforms are like boats. And they made me even taller than I was so I used to clomp around looking like Lurch.

"These days I've got hundreds of pairs of shoes. I've got them everywhere - the bathroom, the living room, the bedroom. It's become a sort of fetish with me. I never want to find myself short of a pair that I fancy.

"My dad, Marty Wilde, has big feet too. In fact, he's got size 14 feet. I can practically get both my feet into one of his shoes.

"Anyway, having at last learned to live with my feet, the next thing I had to sort out my hair. I was always convinced that being blonde must make your life a lot happier, so, in my late teens I finally took the plunge. And I was pleased to find it really did make me happier. They say blondes have more fun. Well, at least, this one does.

"I'm not saying that any girl will suddenly be happier because they've had their hair bleached. It's more a case of the way you feel inside. I'd always really wanted to be blonde so when I was blonde it boosted my ego, made me feel more confident.

"I believe that if there's something in your life that you don't like, you should just go ahead and change it. It doesn't have to be your clothes or your hair. It could be your boyfriend, for example.

"By the time I made a pop record at the age of twenty, I'd already changed my image as much as I wanted to. So when I first went on 'Top Of The Pops' I just walked straight off the street and onto TV, exactly the way I was.

"Once I'd had a hit with 'Kids In America', I seemed to be appearing in the press every day which was quite strange. Fortunately, I was used to the press already to some extent and my photograph had appeared in magazines previously, but only as 'the daughter of the pop star, Marty Wilde' rather than as a person in my own right.

"One magazine did a feature on my father a few months before I made a record but the piece was only printed after I'd had a hit.

"The picture that went with the article showed me just before I'd had my hair dyed blonde. I remember getting quite a shock when I saw it. It seemed to me that I'd become a different person almost overnight.

This is a picture from a Blind Date between Kim and Simon Le Bon - which was set up by Flexipop! magazine. As far as I am aware, nothing much came of it....

"The press put across an image of me which I don't feel represents the person I am at all. I think they see me as part of a family business and therefore portray me as being an inane, over-cosseted, daughter who has little musical input, limited vocal ability but has managed to get on through looking OK and having a famous dad. It's because of that 'puppet' image I had that I started writing my own songs - to prove that I'm not quite the mindless idiot that I'm sometimes made out to be.

"One disadvantage of having blonde hair is that some people tend to cast you in the role of 'dumb blonde'.

"I object to people making those sort of assumptions about me, but that isn't going to make me alter the way I look just to please them.

"I think that photographs often give a very static impression of me. Studio shots can look very good in one way but after a while they do start to look all the same. It seems as though there is a standard 'Kim Wilde pose' which was never intended. I'd rather have more photographs taken of me talking or doing something instead of just standing around looking moody.

"One of my biggest problems at the moment is to grow up in public. I'm a more serous person now than I was when I started making pop records and it's often difficult to let that side of my personality come across in the press. So many newspapers want me to tell them all the private details of my life, which I won't do. There are so many cretins in the pop industry who fall for it - like Wham! and Spandau Ballet spilling all the details of their love life.

"I know that if I came up with lots of dirt on my family, I'd be guaranteed front pages all over the national press. Some singers might think that would be good publicity. But I don't.

"As far as I'm concerned, the public image is just that. An image for the public. I don't think my private life belongs to the public.

"By that, I don't mean that I want to create a totally false image of myself. People can ask me anything they want and I'll answer as truthfully as I can. But there are some questions I won't answer and I'll say so.

"I realise that to a large extent, I am a visual artist and that, therefore the image that I present through photographs and TV is very important part of my career. But I'm not so hooked on publicity that I'll do anything to get it. I rarely even go out to the nightclubs and social occasions where pop stars get their photographs taken. I don't like all that kind of thing.

"You know, underneath all the glamour and publicity, there's still a bit of that shy, tall girl with the mousy hair and big feet. And I think it helps to remember that from time to time. It keeps me head out of the clouds and my big feet planted firmly on the ground."