She holds the record for being the most-charted British female solo act of the 1980s, with seventeen UK Top 40 hit singles.

In 2005, she won a Gold award for her courtyard garden at the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show.

She was born as Kim Smith in the West London suburb of Chiswick, the eldest child of 1950s rock and roller Marty Wilde (birth name Reginald Smith) and Joyce Baker, who had been a member of the singing and dancing group the Vernons Girls.

[6] Wilde's first professional singing credit was as a backup singer to her brother Ricky's 1972 song "I Am an Astronaut.

"[7] Wilde's father Marty and brother, Ricky, were responsible for writing virtually all of her material in the early-to-mid 1980s.

Key influences on the songwriting process included Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), Ultravox, John Foxx, Gary Numan, Skids, Sex Pistols, the Clash, Kraftwerk and the Stranglers.

Her debut studio album Kim Wilde (1981) repeated the success of the single, spawning two further hits in "Chequered Love" (Top 5 in the UK, France, Australia and Germany) and the UK-only single "Water on Glass" (UK No.

Wilde's follow-up album was 1982's Select, led by the hit singles "Cambodia" and "View from a Bridge".

With that hit, she became the fifth UK female solo artist ever to top the US Hot 100, following Petula Clark, Lulu, Sheena Easton, and Bonnie Tyler.

[19] In 1993, she released her first official compilation album The Singles Collection 1981–1993, which was a success throughout Europe and Australia and the dancefloor-influenced single "If I Can't Have You" (a cover of the Yvonne Elliman song from the film Saturday Night Fever that was penned by the Bee Gees), became her last UK Top 20 Hit as well as a No.

[24] She recorded the single "Born to be Wild" in 2002, and in summer of 2003 she had a major hit with "Anyplace, Anywhere, Anytime", a duet with German pop star Nena.

[25] In 2006, Wilde signed a new recording contract with EMI Germany and released the first single from her tenth studio album in many countries across Europe, Scandinavia and Asia.

[21] The album Never Say Never included eight new tracks plus five re-worked previous hits and has charted in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

The label released her eleventh studio album, Come Out and Play on 17 August,[29] with "Lights Down Low" preceding that as lead single.

Wilde's twelfth studio album, Snapshots, was released on 26 August 2011 and featured cover versions of songs hand-picked from the last five decades.

While sitting in her garden with her husband and a friend, they noticed something odd about the sky and experienced an eerie silence.

[39] Wilde holds the record for being the most-charted British female solo act of the 1980s, with seventeen UK Top 40 hit singles throughout the decade (including her duets with Junior Giscombe and Mel Smith).

[40] A number of artists have performed covers of Kim Wilde songs, ranging from pop and rock to dance and death metal versions.

On 16 February 1991, then Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl recorded a version of "Kids in America" in an Arlington County, Virginia basement studio.

[41] It is the third track on the rare 2015 "Songs from the Laundry Room" Foo Fighters EP, a clip of which plays during the credit roll of the Seattle, Washington episode of Grohl's Sonic Highways documentary TV series.

[42] American pop star Tiffany recorded a version of "Kids in America" in 2007 for her album I Think We're Alone Now: '80s Hits and More.

German eurodance act Cascada, recorded a version of "Kids in America", on their Everytime We Touch album in 2007.

[44] In her graphic novel Persepolis, Iranian cartoonist Marjane Satrapi has a comic strip titled Kim Wilde.

Also, when her parents go on holiday in Turkey, they buy a poster of Wilde and smuggle it into Tehran for Marji.

[48] In 2005, she won a Gold award for her courtyard garden at the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show.

In 2001 she was involved in setting a world record for the largest tree transplantation, when a 18 metres (58 ft) London plane was moved from Belgium to a development site in Warrington.

[60] On 1 September 1996, Wilde married her co-star in Tommy, Hal Fowler, and expressed a desire to have children as soon as possible.