Lancashire: Wham! Last Christmas model recalls 'hilarious' video ...
BBC
Wham! achieved worldwide fame with hits including Careless Whisper and Club Tropicana in the 1980s
The model who appeared as George Michael's love interest in the music video for Wham's Last Christmas has said she feels "very lucky" as the song reaches its 40th anniversary.
Kathy Hill, from Accrington, recalled a "hilarious" time shooting the festive video, although she said she had auditioned for it with "a bit of a hangover" and "didn't mind if I got it or not".
She told BBC Radio Lancashire she was now "obviously over the moon" she got the job.
Written and produced by George Michael, the 1984 track conveys the pain of unrequited love from the perspective of someone "once bitten and twice shy".
It reached number one in 16 countries and has ratcheted up four billion audio streams and one billion video views.
Kathy Hill
Kathy Hill was in a real-life relationship with the Oscar-winning musician Vangelis at the time
Hill had been a dental nurse in her Lancashire hometown and later in Manchester when she saw a job advert looking for models.
She ended up working in Milan, Tokyo and London before getting the role of the ex-girlfriend on the Last Christmas video, which involved a trip to the now-famous Swiss chalet landscape of Saas Fee.
"It wasn't paying loads of money. I was quite spoilt at the time so I did a bit of travelling around the world and I thought oh well I'll go [for the audition], that sounds like fun and I think I was quite relaxed," she said.
As Hill was cast as the initial "someone special" who then gave the lover's heart away, she said she was fitted out with brightly coloured tops.
"Everything I wore in the video - the idea was it had to be bright because I'm the ex and [co-star] Debbie had to wear darker clothes," she said.
She described working with the Wham! quartet as "relaxed and fantastic", differing to other modelling roles where it could take "a long time to get to know people because you're meeting them for the first time".
Some of the video's stars - including the remaining Wham members - reunited in Switzerland for a new BBC documentary
Regarding the famous dinner table scene featuring the pair's eyes meeting over glasses of red wine, she said: "At one point I couldn't drink anymore.
"You can see in that shot where George is looking at me and I'm looking back, I'm pretending to drink the wine because, honestly, Andrew [Ridgeley] and I had so much. It was just hilarious."
In real life she had then been in a relationship with the musician Vangelis, who had won an Oscar for the theme to the 1981 Chariots of Fire film.
She even wore his long grey coat during the making of the video.
"He didn't want me to go [to Switzerland] because George was impossibly handsome and he said I will pay you if you don't go – and I wouldn't have taken it anyway but I'm just so glad that I did it," she said.
Although George Michael did have relationships with women in the earlier part of his career, he publicly revealed he was gay in 1998.
He died on Christmas Day in 2016 and Hill remembers him as "a gorgeous soul".
She believes Last Christmas "spans the generations", saying that both her 96-year-old mother and 33-year-old twin children love the track.
"The song itself sounds incredibly fresh – it's like the first time you've ever heard it really, it's so beautifully written.
"We had a fantastic time – I absolutely loved it and I'm so lucky to have been in it."
