Jools Topp
Singing sisters The Topp Twins have influenced a generation of Kiwi entertainers. As musician Don McGlashan writes in this Topp Twins Collection, the twins "swaggered into the limelight and stayed there; courting, and being rapturously embraced by, a wide audience, including quite conservative people, while never softening their outspoken stances on many current issues".
The Topp Twins combo has its own magic. When Jools Topp is performing on-stage, she sometimes finds herself laughing at her sister Lynda's jokes, "60 years down the line".
Jools and Lynda grew up on a dairy farm near Huntly. At age five they sang at a cousin's birthday, and at Huntly College they scored second place at a talent quest, singing 'Lean On Me' with their brother Bruce. It was Bruce who "started the ball rolling", by buying his sisters a guitar and instruction book, when they were aged around 12. Jools quickly took the guitar and threw the book away. "I've never looked at another guitar book ever," she says. "I just learned all the chords that I could. They're all just very basic chords."
After six weeks training down south with the territorials, the twins began busking, initially during a two year stint in Christchurch. Later they began attracting a keen following in Auckland via regular Friday night street performances. The task of encouraging crowds to stop forced them to up their showmanship. As Jools puts it, "that was our training ground, how to woo a crowd". The busking began when the twins headed into town from the bush in their decaying Holden station wagon, and realised they didn't have enough money for supplies. They thought "let's just go and sing on the street, and get enough money to get home".
Crowds soon grew so big, one legendary performance saw them taken to court for obstruction. They won the case. Soon after, they were invited to join a university orientation tour.
In the heady political days of the 1980s, The Topp Twins provided music at a range of protests, including nuclear-free marches and the homosexual law reform bill. Says Jools: "Every good movement needs a damn good song, and we were just in the right place at the right time." She recalls a memorable gig in London alongside Billy Bragg (see clip four) as one of the only times she lost her cool on-stage. After she swore at a punk rocker who was heckling them about his dislike of yodelling, the audience began enthusiastically pogoing to the music.
Lynda has often taken on the yodelling and crowd-work, whilst Jools focuses on the guitar playing. As Jools says in this 2022 Sunday interview, her role is to "make sure the music's right. And Lynda . . . she's looking at the crowd. Making sure the crowd's with us".
Upfront about being lesbian, the twins' unique act of country and western inspired songs and comedy, won over a wide audience. "There's something quite beautiful about having a green-haired punk rocker sitting next to a 90-year old grandmother and they are all laughing at the same thing".
Once they began playing longer shows in theatres, the twins realised they needed more comedy content, and began inventing characters. They began by splitting a horrifying gingham skirt found in a second hand shop. So was born the country-mad Gingham Sisters Belle and Belle (who are seen performing back in 1986, nine minutes into this clip). As Jools says: "We made ourselves look ridiculous ... we asked them to laugh at us, not to laugh at someone else's misfortune."
In 1987 a Topp Twins Special showcasing the duo's stage material won three Kiwi television awards, including Best Entertainment Programme and Best Entertainer. Since then The Topp Twins have amassed many TV appearances. In the 1990s they began working with their longtime manager and producer Arani Cuthbert. They performed in North America, and did a month in London. The show was bought to Kiwi television in late 1993 as one-off special Camping Out with the Topp Twins.
The first of three seasons of primetime series The Topp Twins - Do Not Adjust Your Twin- Set (later shortened to The Topp Twins) debuted in 1996. The show saw the twins mixing comedy and documentary material, with fictional characters like Camp Leader (played by Jools), and good keen Kiwi blokes the Kens taking part in real-life situations. Said Jools: "People feel self-conscious when they've got a big camera pointing at them, so we needed to create those characters to make people feel at ease to really communicate with them".
As with many of the duo's characters, Jools' performance is usually the softer or more relaxed of the pair, bouncing off Lynda's boisterous alter egos. One example is this Otago episode of Do Not Adjust Yur Twin-Set, where Lynda's Ken has no qualms telling Jools' Ken the best way to handle a horse. Or in The Beach episode, where the bossy Camp Mother (Lynda) cajoles her bumbling sidekick Camp Leader (Jools) into completing a triathlon — wearing jelly sandals and a pink inflatable ring, no less!
In 2000 Camp Mother and Camp Leader hosted quiz show Mr and Mrs, in which couples answered questions about how well they knew each other. As the sweet but silly Camp Leader, Jools escorted contestants onstage, announced results, and fed the audience a run of risqué jokes during filming breaks.
From the mid-1990s through to around 2007, The twins were a frequent fixture on Kiwi television screens — alongside their various TV shows and specials, they also fronted advertising campaigns (NZ Post and Gregg's Coffee), guested on travel shows (Cathay Pacific Destination Planet Earth) and often had their antics chronicled on news and current affairs shows (such as Holmes and 3 News).
The Topp Twins - Untouchable Girls hit local cinemas in 2009. The film was directed by Leanne Pooley, who was keen to learn how two "highly politicised" gay women had won over mainstream New Zealand. Part concert film, part biopic, and part historical record, Untouchable Girls won positive reviews — The NZ Herald called it "a Topp effort, all round" — and a raft of awards at both queer and straight film festivals worldwide. Locally, the film's $1.85 million gross set a record for a Kiwi documentary, and also edged it into the top ten list of Kiwi releases on NZ soil. Theatrical releases followed in Australia and the United States.
In 2006 Jools was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. The sisters chose to speak out about the disease that kills hundreds of New Zealand women every year, integrating their personal story of treatment and recovery into their stage show, and doing a fundraising event for Breast Cancer Awareness.
In 2014 the Topp Twins returned to television screens on Topp Country. This time they mostly played themselves, as they took a culinary journey around New Zealand. The show was one of the highest rated local programmes of 2014. NZ Herald reviewer Colin Hogg praised it as "truly wonderful television". A second season in 2015 scored the twins an NZ Television Award for Best Entertainment Presenter — three decades after they'd first taken out the same category, for their debut TV special.
In 2018 the twins were named Dames Companions of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to entertainment. In the same period they sat down for one of their biggest interviews, for documentary series Funny As: The Story of New Zealand Comedy. NZ On Screen's Topp Twins Collection features highlights across three decades of the duo's work.
A skilled horsewoman, Jools has run her own business specialising in shoeing horses.
Updated on 31 May 2023
Sources include
Topp Twins website. Accessed 31 May 2023
Diva Productions website. Accessed 31 May 2023
Jules and Lynda Topp,The Topp Twins Book (Auckland: Penguin Books 2003)
Russell Baillie, 'Untouchable Girls' (Review) - The NZ Herald, 8 April 2009
Frances Grant, 'They're Topps' (Interview) - The NZ Herald, 30 June 2000
Colin Hogg, 'Colin Hogg: Topps shine as rambling foodies' (Review of Topp Country) - The NZ Herald, 13 May 2014
Hannah McKee, 'The Topp Twins take a break from telly' (Interview). Stuff website. Loaded 15 October 2015. Accessed 31 May 2023
The Topp Twins - Untouchable Girls press kit