Record-breaking 80s pop star making epic comeback decades after quitting music for landscape gardening

POP star Kim Wilde was lured back into performing — by singing Abba songs at a village fete.

The Kids in America hitmaker, 64, put her stellar career on the backburner in the late 1990s to pursue gardening.

But she will return with a new album early next year — and credits a fete in her Hertfordshire village for the rethink.

She told told the White Wine Question Time podcast: “They asked me to sing Abba but when I got there they asked if I’d do Kids in America.

“I was quite anti the whole idea of it but when I sang it the whole place went crazy.

"So the village takes credit for getting me back on stage, which I rather love.”

Kim, daughter of 1950s rocker Marty Wilde, holds the record as the most-charted British female solo act of the 1980s, with 17 UK top 40 hit singles.

She enjoyed gardening success, winning a Gold award for her courtyard garden at the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show in 2005.

Kim is also an author and has published two books on gardening - Gardening with Children (2005) and The First Time Gardener (2006).

But now she has got the enthusiasm for music once again, and is planning to make the most of it.