Kylie's sorrow for Britney

Pop princess Kylie Minogue has expressed sympathy for US star Britney Spears, who burst into tears on television this week when she was asked about her break-up with former boyfriend Justin Timberlake.

Kylie, 35, said: “It is a lot of pressure, you hate to say, ’I’m tired, this is hard, that’s hard’, because I try to have the glass half full.

“But it’s funny when you’re doing promotion it is very tiring, you see all these other performers who are doing it too, and everyone looks as tired as everyone else.

“When I was her age, I was finding some things difficult as well, we tend to forget she’s 21 years old.

“It seems like she’s got her family around her, that’s where I turned when things were difficult for me, and if you have that, you’ll be fine.”

Tonight’s Money Can’t Buy show is costing around £1m (€1.4m) to stage and will involve five costume changes in 75 minutes.

Most of the 4,000-strong audience will be competition winners and invited guests.

Minogue, who is enjoying her seventh spell at the top of the charts with sultry new single Slow, has a new album – Body Language – out on Monday, the follow-up to her global hit Fever.

She was asked about comments she reportedly made recently criticising today’s steamy videos and saying she would cover up more than in the past.

She said: “I can’t remember what I said, but the quotes keep changing every time it’s written.

“I don’t regret anything I’ve done, if I had never been asked about it, I don’t think you would notice a difference, it’s a very subtle change.”

Asked how she would like to be remembered, she smiled: “I don’t mind it when they write ’Princess of Pop’, I don’t shun that, I’m very flattered by it.”

And asked who her biggest influence is, she said Olivia Newton-John when she (Kylie) was nine, Madonna five years later, and Prince when she was a teenager.

And she confirmed that Brigitte Bardot was her strongest current reference, saying: “I just tended to think of BB as a sexpot, she was one of the greatest pin-ups, but she was really radical at that time. I focus on the period when she was a perfect blend of coquette and rock and roll.

Asked how happy she is on a scale of one to 10, Minogue said simply “10”.

And asked what drawbacks there were to being a global pop icon, she said: “loss of privacy. And pure invention that sometimes happens”.