Kylie still hurt by reception back home

Australian pop beauty Kylie Minogue still harbours the heartache sparked by homeland's refusal to take her seriously as a pop artist.

The Slow singer launched a pop career in 1988 after garnering fame as a TV actress in Australian soap Neighbours, but radio stations Down Under banned her songs from the airwaves.

Minogue insists her fellow countrymen and women failed to accept her career conversion because they couldn't get the image of her TV alter-ego Charlene out of their heads.

The 36-year-old says: "In Australia, where pop music wasn't popular anyway, no radio stations would play it. It was more about credibility: you were in a band, you'd done the pub scene for five or ten years and that's how you earned your stripes.

"I can understand how they got their feathers ruffled: 'What? Charlene from Neighbours? She's number one?'

"That was really hurtful for me at the time and there still is a tiny bit of me that still feels… well, 'the pain' sounds too dramatic, but it did hurt."