Dame Jools Topp, one half of the Topp Twins, has died from cancer

Dame Jools Topp, one half of legendary New Zealand folk duo the Topp Twins, has died at the age of 68.

The Topp Twins’ management company confirmed that Dame Jools died peacefully at her home on Saturday with her twin sister Lynda, brother Bruce, close friends and pets by her side.

The name that topped the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours was unfamiliar to most New Zealanders: Dame Julie Bethridge Topp.

For almost half a century, they had known her as Camp Leader, one half of the Kens, Raylene to her sister’s Brenda, and a taonga, a national treasure.

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.

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’s Ruawaro dairy farm. Always close – “Say we’re apart for three days, we become physically sick sometimes,” Lynda said – their brother Bruce gave them a guitar and a Play in a Day manual on their 11th birthday.

“It did exactly what it said it was going to do on the front cover,” Jools recalled. “So I learnt all the chords in a day and I’ve never done any other thing with a guitar.”

Although, “I spent a lot of time down the back of the bus going home from Huntly College with the Māori kids in the back, where they would teach me the Māori strum.”

After leaving school in 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.

When they came out, “Mum said, ‘Wait until your sister finds out!’ And I said, ‘You’ve got another think coming, Mum!” one of the twins remembered. They’d followed older brother Bruce: “We’re all gay,” Jools said with pride.

They’d planned to go back and take over the farm. Mum and Dad put their feet down: “Dad said, ‘If you come home and look after the farm, you’ll be tied to it for the rest of your lives. Go and see the world’.”

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.

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: “Sometimes 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.”

If New Zealand’s 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.

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 Bowling Ladies, the Gingham Sisters – simultaneously sending up and revealing their affection for their heartland upbringing.

Jools mused on the Kens’ place in Kiwi folklore. “These 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.” Which they frequently did.

The twins would remain an ever-present fixture on the country’s small screens for three decades, but it wasn’t big enough for their personalities. Leanne Pooley’s 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.

And print: Jools published five children’s books, their cooking series Topp Country resulted in a recipe collection, and they published a memoir Untouchable Girls: The Topp Twins’ Story in 2023, largely compiled during pandemic downtime.

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.

Jools was diagnosed with breast cancer in 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.

The Twins’ 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’ Degrees, the Comedy Trust’s gongs and naming the Topp Prize for “a practising individual, duo or group with a strong, clear and unique voice”'.

Let’s remember Jools Topp with this true story that could only happen around her, or perhaps to Ken Smythe. In March 2018 the nation’s great and good turned out to honour the twins when an exhibition about them opened at the National Library, over the road from Parliament.

Two other women, also raised on Waikato dairy farms, were among the guests. Helen Clark made a speech. The other revealed she’d bid for a caravan, to use as a mobile office, in a TradeMe auction, and won it for $1400, from an anonymous seller.

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.

This article was first published by the NZ Herald and is republished here with permission.