‘We need to keep you alive’: Dannii Minogue gets emotional discussing Kylie’s breast cancer in new Take Five

Dannii Minogue has become emotional about her sister Kylie’s breast cancer fight, nearly 20 years after her diagnosis.

Minogue breaks down in tears while discussing the difficulties they endured as a family while supporting the beloved singer through her brutal chemotherapy treatment, in the new season of the ABC series Take Five with Zan Rowe, which begins on Tuesday.

“It was the worst time ever . . . but also the most magical,” Minogue tells Rowe in an emotional interview for the show where celebrities open up about the music that holds great meaning in their lives.

“It was bad, but also, good things came out of it.

“I remember her being carried off stage . . . and the way it affected so many other people — the letters they wrote to Kylie, we have still got (those).

“And in the process of getting her better, it was music that kept us going.

“And she was like, ‘I need to finish the tour. . .’ She’s so professional! But I was like, ‘Oh for God’s sake: we need to keep you alive!”

In the chat, Minogue also details for the first time the other devastating event that dominated that time in her life: her best friend’s own struggle with cancer, a struggle she ultimately lost.

It makes for powerful viewing, just a week after Kylie announced a new world tour, which kicks off in Perth in February.

“I really felt that too,” says Rowe, who chatted with The Sunday Times from her home in the Eastern States.

“I think (Dannii) came ready to share.

“She said after the shoot that she hadn’t spoken to people about any of this stuff publicly — ever — and I think she felt like she could trust me in that room to share those stories.”

It helped that Minogue was a fan of Rowe’s other podcast project, Bang On, a show she hosts with radio colleague and good friend, Myf Warhurst.

Over the seven years that podcast has been going, the twosome have built an incredible connection with their loyal listeners — Minogue is among their legions of fans.

“I didn’t realise, but when she arrived at the shoot, she was like, ‘Oh, I love Bang On!” Rowe says.

“Sometimes people say these things, but then she mentioned something very specific we’d (been talking about) in the most recent episode, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God — she’s not bulls...ing!

“Maybe that’s why she felt like she could go there?

“But yeah, that trust — I never take it for granted.”

Minogue is not the only star who’s been prepared to share with Rowe over the years: over seasons one and two, there have been a host of big names who have got personal while rifling through their record collections.

Noel Gallagher, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Missy Higgins, Guy Pearce, Jimmy Barnes and Tori Amos are just some of the big names, with this season seeing comedian Bill Bailey, actress Claudia Karvan, Crowded House frontman Neil Finn, singer Bernard Fanning and performer Casey Donovan also sitting down to chat.

Rowe says planning each season is a careful game of Tetris.

“The first person who says yes, we then think, ‘Okay, what else do we want from this series?” she explains.

“And we are always thinking about the diversity in experience: their lived experience in music, their background in music, cultural diversity, gender diversity; we always want to have a mix as it’s only six episodes we’re playing with.”

The guests they knit together each bring something entirely different to the discussion, “and that’s the through-line,” Rowe explains.

“No matter what you are, even if you’re a fair-weather fan, everyone has got a soundtrack to their life and some sort of connection to music — and I think the show is a beautiful way of exploring that.”

As she explains, Take Five is “the little idea that could, and it continues to astound me in the way songs can tell the stories of who we are”.

Rowe says she hopes her little show will continue for many years to come.

“The thing that really thrilled me about bringing it to TV was, you know, that for years and years, I was sitting opposite people in a radio studio, and I was seeing their faces as they heard a song, and it’s just this sensory memory,” she explains.

“You can’t hear that on radio, right?

“But with (the TV series), we’re in these small rooms, in bars, in recording studios, and we’re sitting close to each other because you want it to be a conversation where it’s just, like, you’re talking to the person.

“Whoever my guest is, we both forget that the cameras are there, and that’s when people relax and enjoy themselves, and trust me to be able to go there — because everything else has faded away.”

Season three of Take Five starts Tuesday 8.30pm on ABC, with all episodes on iView