The sun shone brightly at the Minogue family home in Melbourne in early May last year. The eldest daughter was home from Paris, surrounded by her nearest and dearest, when the news came.

“The moment my doctor told me, I went silent,” says Kylie Minogue. “My mum and dad were with me, then we all went to pieces.”

The pop star was due to start a sellout Australian tour four days later. Instead she had been diagnosed with early stage breast cancer at 36.

Her first instinct was to do what she had always done: get back to work. “I was saying, ‘No, I’ve got my flight to Sydney in two hours. I’m getting on a plane’.”

Her parents were alarmed, and eventually her father Ron, 65, grabbed hold of his daughter, saying sternly, “No. You’re not getting a plane. You’ll just sit down.”

Minogue was in a daze and unable to absorb the information. To try to clear her head, she took a walk on the beach with her brother Brendan and boyfriend Olivier Martinez, the French film actor.

She had “one day’s grace” before telling her public. After making the announcement next day, “I was virtually a prisoner in the house. I was completely thrown into another world.”

This is how Minogue recounts it in an interview to be broadcast on Sky One this evening. It is the first time the singer has spoken at any length of her 14-month “ordeal”. (“I hate to use that word,” she says cheerily, “but it kinda sums it up.”)

Throughout the interview Minogue looks unlike a woman who nearly died. At times she appears strained as she struggles to find the right words, but there are no tears — at least not proper ones — because she says she doesn’t like to dwell.

The headscarf is gone. The sunken cheeks have turned rosy. Her hair is back, cropped and dyed a fetching blonde. She looks gamine, not poorly. She wears diamonds.

Interviewer: Is it important for you to feel as though you are constantly moving forwards and you are constantly taking risks?

Minogue: Yeah . . . having had cancer, one important thing to know is you’re still the same person at the end, you are the same person during it. You’re stripped down to, you know, you’re . . . down near zero. But . . . it seems that most people come out at the other end feeling more like themselves than ever before.

I’m more eager than ever to do what I did. I want to do everything. I don’t want it to sound soppy but that’s the way it is. Try to enjoy the moment. Have a laugh. Swim in the sea. Hug and kiss.