Sitting cross-legged on the cream leather corner sofa in her Primrose Hill home, Highway’s curly hair is pinned back in a messy bun, her doll-like, heart-shaped face glowing but entirely make-up free. Apologizing profusely for not being dressed up enough, she is still elegant in a pale grey cashmere tracksuit with bare, perfectly pedicured feet. ‘What happened was, a few nights before the opening party, I was at Covent Garden Home and bumped into Freddie. I was so happy to see him, because I’d completely forgotten he was even in town . . .’
Freddie, of course, is Freddie Hunter, the angelic all-American former choirboy who found early fame back home Stateside in chart-topping pop trio Sideways （you may recall the coordinated denim outfits, the gelled spiky hair）， before walking out on the band at the height of their success and moving to the UK to escape the spotlight. Now, of course, anglophile Freddie is best known as the top-rated late-night talk-show host in the US – a gig landed after several stints in rehab and a good few years bouncing around his adopted home, presenting British prime-time TV （hence the occasional cockney inflection to his Californian accent）。 Famously fun, faultlessly charming, unfailingly flattering to his talk show guests, Freddie was the one who hatched the plan to smuggle his old friend onto Island Home in the helicopter he keeps at his Surrey mansion （one of several palatial properties he owns around the world）， the same make and model as the one he keeps at his Montecito house and pilots （or pretends to pilot, for insurance reasons） while singing with guests in the Mile-High Duets segment of his show.
‘Home clubs are like that,’ Kyra explains. ‘Even if you’re nipping in for a quick drink on a Tuesday night, it feels like a house party where you know everyone. Anyway, Freddie and me have been friends forever,’ she continues, pointing to a framed photo on the sideboard of them both, obviously in their teens, on stage at Madison Square Garden. ‘That was back when I was trying to break out in the USA.’ She laughs and shakes her head. ‘That never happened, did it? Anyway, Freddie and I got on like a house on fire from the first time we met, and when he quit the band and moved over here, we had an absolute riot. Possibly too much fun actually . . .’ She winks.
‘We’ve had this tradition since he moved back to the US for his show, that once a year we go away somewhere to just hang out.’ She gives her trademark cackle. ‘Clubbing in Ibiza, a week in the Maldives if we’re feeling flush. We’ve done Vegas, a detox retreat in Hawaii – we lasted two nights on a juice fast there before we escaped to drink pina coladas . . .’ She points to another framed photo of them grinning, clutching bucket-sized cocktails in a beach bar, flushed with rum and sunburn.
‘Anyway, that night, after a drink or three, we did a few songs on the piano in the upstairs bar, and then we had a few more drinks. And he said he was going to Island Home on Thursday, he was flying himself down. Because we hadn’t had our trip yet that year and it was already October, he said that I should come.’ She gives a little shrug. ‘I didn’t have anything on, so I said yes. We didn’t really think it through, I guess.’
For someone who, if this five-floor north London townhouse is any indicator, made serious money during her recording career, with three UK number ones, two top ten UK albums and sell-out stadium shows across Europe under her belt, Kyra Highway is astonishingly modest. So self-effacing that it’s easy to overlook the scale of her success, how big a star she actually was at the peak of her career. Given her composure, it is also easy to forget how far she has come – how much she has overcome – to get here, something she details with brutal honesty in her best-selling autobiography My Way, the Highway. The abusive teenage boyfriend. The bullying at school. The sudden ascent to pop fame aged fourteen. All those jokes on Never Mind the Buzzcocks about her Birmingham accent. The paparazzi harassment. The tabloid stings. That divorce. When you think how long ago she had her first hit, how solid a presence she has been in the public consciousness since, it is hard to believe the singer is still only in her mid-thirties.
‘I did briefly question if they’d actually want me there, but Freddie was adamant Annie Spark would be thrilled – or at least if she wasn’t, then she wouldn’t cause a scene,’ Kyra recalls. ‘And he was right about that. You should have seen their faces, though, as they walked up the lawn to meet us and it wasn’t just Freddie standing there waving. My God, their expressions. The panic. Especially after they realized I’d brought Lyra too, when she hopped out of the chopper behind me.’ She half smiles at the memory, then shakes her head, grows thoughtful.