West Auckland Hospice<\/a>.<\/p>\nA national treasure<\/p>\n
![\"Dames]()
Dames Jools and Lynda Topp at the 2024 Aotearoa New Zealand Book Industry Awards for their 2023 memoir Untouchable Girls: The Topp Twins Story. Photo \/ Alyse Wright<\/p>\n
The name that topped the 2018 Queen\u2019s Birthday Honours was unfamiliar to most New Zealanders: Dame Julie Bethridge Topp.<\/p>\n
For almost half a century, they had known her as Camp Leader, one half of the Kens, Raylene to her sister\u2019s Brenda, and a taonga, a national treasure.<\/p>\n
Jools and twin sister Lynda sang, entertained and prodded Kiwi consciences in concert halls, TV and movie screens, in books and on street corners from the early 1970s until the early years of this decade.<\/p>\n
But the pair, born on 14 May 1958 in Huntly, had been harmonising since they were 5, growing up on their parents Jean and Peter\u2019s Ruawaro dairy farm. Always close \u2013 \u201cSay we\u2019re apart for three days, we become physically sick sometimes,\u201d Lynda said \u2013 their brother Bruce gave them a guitar and a Play in a Day manual on their 11th birthday.<\/p>\n
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The Topp Twins imprinted themselves on the nation\u2019s consciousness as the country-singing, golden age New Zealand duo.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt did exactly what it said it was going to do on the front cover,\u201d Jools recalled.\u202f\u201cSo I learnt all the chords in a day and I\u2019ve never done any other thing with a guitar.\u201d <\/p>\n
Although, \u201cI spent a lot of time down the back of the bus going home from Huntly College with the M\u0101ori kids in the back, where they would teach me the M\u0101ori strum.\u201d<\/p>\n
After leaving school\u202fin 1976, they joined the Territorial Force and were posted to Burnham Military Camp near Christchurch. Performing at a city coffee lounge, they met and identified with other radical lesbian feminists.<\/p>\n
When they came out, \u201cMum said, \u2018Wait until your sister finds out!\u2019 And I said, \u2018You\u2019ve got another think coming, Mum!\u201d one of the twins remembered. They\u2019d followed older brother Bruce: \u201cWe\u2019re all gay,\u201d Jools said with pride.<\/p>\n
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Topp Twins – Lynda and Jools at 25. Photo \/ Supplied <\/p>\n
They\u2019d planned to go back and take over the farm. Mum and Dad put their feet down: \u201cDad said, \u2018If you come home and look after the farm, you\u2019ll be tied to it for the rest of your lives. Go and see the world\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
They hit SH1 for the Big Smoke. Busking on Queen St, the twins were taken to court for causing an obstruction because their crowd was too big. They won the case and took their openly political protest songs around the country, spotlighting the anti-apartheid movement, Maori land rights, anti-nuclear action, abortion and homosexual law reform, developing characters to banter with the audience around the music.<\/p>\n
Their later success in TV comedy shows obscured that, first and foremost, the sisters always were a music act. The lead songwriter, Jools felt that deeply: \u201cSometimes people forget about our music because they see the characters on television. The most important thing is that the songs and the music have always been the vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
If New Zealand\u2019s cultural life was lacking one thing in the 1990s, it was a primetime TV series featuring two singing, strumming, yodelling, cross-dressing, wisecracking lesbian sisters.<\/p>\n
![\"The]()
The Topp Twins in 2020. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
That was put right when they created Do Not Adjust Your Twinset, which ran for three seasons and showcased their cast of Kiwi characters – Camp Mother & Camp Leader, the\u202fBowling Ladies, the Gingham Sisters \u2013 simultaneously sending up and revealing their affection for their heartland upbringing.<\/p>\n
Jools mused on the Kens\u2019 place in Kiwi folklore. \u201cThese are two of our most favourite characters. They are a tribute to the New Zealand farmer because they are true-blue boys. They get asked to present the cup at the A&P shows for the best bull.\u201d Which they frequently did.<\/p>\n
The twins would remain an ever-present fixture on the country\u2019s small screens for three decades, but it wasn\u2019t big enough for their personalities. Leanne Pooley\u2019s 2009 feature, The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls, broke all records for a New Zealand documentary. Show at film festivals worldwide, it won awards in Toronto, Melbourne, Gothenburg, Portland and the NZ Film and Television Awards.<\/p>\n
And print: Jools published five children\u2019s books, their cooking series Topp Country resulted in a recipe collection, and they published a memoir Untouchable Girls: The Topp Twins\u2019 Story\u202fin 2023, largely compiled during pandemic downtime.<\/p>\n
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The twins were awarded the Nielsen BookData NZ Award for the best-selling NZ title at the 2024 Aotearoa New Zealand Book Industry Awards for their 2023 memoir Untouchable Girls: The Topp Twins Story. Photo \/ Alyse Wright![\"The]()
The Topp Twins Dame Lynda and Dame Jools hold a special place in all of our hearts thanks to their humour, songs and unforgettable characters. Photo \/ Woman’s Weekly<\/p>\n
Outside entertainment, Jools was a skilled horsewoman and shared a 7ha Helensville property, Liberty Circle Ranch, with her partner. Alongside dogs, chickens, cattle, cats and about 10 horses, the property helped families to rehabilitate and train equines. Jools was famous for answering her phone while riding her horses bareback in her arena; the property was sold when the couple split after 17 years together.<\/p>\n
Jools was diagnosed with breast cancer\u202fin October 2006 at the age of 48. She recovered well after a mastectomy and several months of chemotherapy. In typical style, the sisters incorporated her story into a show that toured New Zealand to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Foundation. In 2022 it was revealed that Lynda had also been diagnosed with breast cancer in the previous year.<\/p>\n
The Twins\u2019 honours are too numerous to list: five platinum LPs, the Aotearoa Music Awards Hall of Fame, the Film and Television Awards statuettes, the Honorary Masters\u2019 Degrees, the Comedy Trust\u2019s gongs and naming the Topp Prize for \u201ca practising individual, duo or group with a strong, clear and unique voice\u201d’.<\/p>\n
![\"Lynda]()
Lynda Topp and Jools Topp from the Topp Twins. Photo \/ Warren Buckland<\/p>\n
In March 2018 the nation\u2019s great and good turned out to honour the twins when an exhibition about them opened at the National Library, over the road from Parliament.<\/p>\n
Two other women, also raised on Waikato dairy farms, were among the guests. Helen Clark made a speech. The other revealed she\u2019d bid for a caravan, to use as a mobile office, in a TradeMe auction, and won it for $1400, from an anonymous seller.<\/p>\n
She drove to the farm to pick up her prize. Jools met her at the gate and showed her to the somewhat tired caravan. As Jacinda Ardern tried not to look like a townie in her high heels, the door fell off.<\/p>\n
![\"Dame]()
Dame Jools Topp. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cShe lived bravely with breast cancer for 22 years. Now she is finally free to ride on Pegasus,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2534,2947,6179,156,20423,71,2964,6871,170559,13630,111,139,69,1118,5270,223,170558,1850,80],"class_list":["post-443573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-cancer","tag-dame","tag-died","tag-entertainment","tag-folk","tag-from","tag-half","tag-has","tag-jools","tag-legendary","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-one","tag-the","tag-topp","tag-twins","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}