On top of the world

Lynda (left), and Jools are on top of the world after their documentary <i>Untouchable Girl</i>s won audience choice award in Toronto. Photo / Mark Mitchell

There was a fire alarm in the middle of my attempted interview with the Topp Twins. It was like being at one of their shows. "That phone call I made earlier?" said Lynda. "I said, 'Take that bloody interview down around 11am!"'

We'd been at the Holiday Inn in Wellington. We had to go out on to the street. Jools said, "We'll have to change our hotel. To Holiday Out." That is a terrible joke and I laughed like a drain and you would have too if you'd been at the show. As interviews went, it was a terrible interview, if an interview means asking questions and getting answers.

Five minutes in, I threw my questions on the table and said, "Questions? Ha." I should have known better. It's their show, and I got a free two-hour performance, which is not to suggest that they were acting at being anything but themselves.

I did ask them whether they could put their fee up now they were world-famous but they both heard this (identical twinny hearing?) as "put your feet up". And it was such a typically mad Topp Twin moment, I didn't re-ask it.

The answer is "no", and possibly "no". People think they are rich and they say they probably have earned a lot of money over the years but, said Jools, "we spend it on ridiculous things like horses". Lynda: "And tractors."

They are just back from the Toronto International Film Festival, where their documentary Untouchable Girls screened to much acclaim, and so are possibly in even higher spirits than usual, although I suspect it would be hard to tell.

There was a charming review from Variety: "A documentary that has you falling in love with two of the crazier people you've never met." The doco won the audience choice award. Michael Moore was runner-up. "He'll be wondering who these bloody upstart New Zealanders who stole his documentary award are," Jools said.

"And that was how they wrote it on the screen, you know: Michael Moore, runner-up. I thought, 'It's better if you weren't even there, than to say runner-up."' Well, quite. It's like getting second-best calf at calf day. "Yeah, you only want champion calf," said Lynda. I think that was Lynda. They don't look all that much alike or, you think when you're with them, sound that much alike.

But on a recording it is hard to tell them apart. I'm sure I haven't managed it. They don't simply finish each other's sentences, they speak in unison sometimes and at others nip in and out, like a pair of good sheep dogs working the same sheep (the farmer's daughters influence is contagious).

They are, oddly, most distinctively individuals when they are putting on their characters: Ken and Ken, Camp Leader and Camp Mother, Prue and Dilly.

They don't analyse where these characters come from, or why they are so loved. Well, no, you might not when one of the Kens is in love with Camp Mother, who also plays Ken, who is played by Lynda ... I was relieved to hear Jools had come up with that storyline.

Lynda: "Yeah, because otherwise it would have been real bad. The ego problem of falling in love with myself! But why would you analyse it? If you put it out there as an analytical idea, rugby clubs would say hang on a minute! 'Okay, boys, I've got these two women, they're lesbians and they dress up as men ... You think that's a good idea?' And they'd go, 'What? Are you f***ing crazy!"'

They are in Wellington for the Wearable Art Awards where they will appear as Prue and Dilly Ramsbottom, the ladies who lunch, and give housekeeping instructions to the audience on what they're not allowed to do.

Their call sheet says something like: Prue and Dilly come on and say ... something. God help the organisers. Jools has some thoughts. "We just made it up last night.

I said, 'This show goes on forever. There's no frigging interval. I can't smoke. I can't piss. I can't shit."' Will she say that? "We'll say whatever comes out on the night." They never have a script. Lynda: "No, f*** it." Jools: "If you give us a script, we'll forget it."

Only they could get away with what they do get away with. Only they would make jokes about their "chin hair" with the photographer.

It doesn't bear analysis. I asked Lynda whether she'd ever smoked because her Ken, despite never lighting that rollie, convinces us that he must be a smoker.

"The Topp Twins don't smoke," she (or Camp Mother) said sternly. John Clarke, she says, has a great line on Ken's smoking. He's holding that fag in such a way that a 10-ounce glass of beer could drop from heaven into his hand at any blessed moment. "I never even thought about that, but that's how astute John Clarke is."

But it is somehow more disconcerting meeting them as the Topp Twins. Because to further confuse things, there are also the Topp Twins, and the Topp Twins.

The Topp Twins, meaning Jools and Lynda, don't have Facebook pages, for example. "No way," said Jools, "it's bad news. The CIA invented that to keep track of everyone in the world."

But "The Topp Twins have Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and God knows what," said Lynda.

So they're quite distinct from you two, these Topp Twins? I asked, trying to get my head around the concept. Jools: "Yes, they are."

Lynda: "I actually administer the website. We won't let anybody else administer a website. There's no company working for the Topp Twins."

Jools: "That's why it's out of date!"

Lynda: "It's completely up to date!"

They've always said that there's no mystery to them; that they're good, wholesome country girls. They can't have always been good, all the time. "No," they say.

Lynda: "I crashed the truck when I was little. That was bad."

Jools: "Everyone does things like that. I took drugs when I was little." When she was 15 she worked at the chemist shop in Huntly and took prescription drugs, put on wigs and tried to serve people. "There was nothing to do in Huntly."

Lynda: "I didn't like it."

Jools: "Lynda didn't like it. She was worried for me."

That is not terrifically naughty, but they have high standards. We talked about young people today and how they don't have a work ethic.

Lynda: "We had this from our Dad, you rolled up your sleeves and you helped out and that's something I've found difficult having kids in my life now [her partner has two teenage boys.] There's such a different ethic of what work is, for a start." Jools: "You ask them to chop a pile of wood and they go, 'No, f*** off, I'm doing my fingernails.' And that's the boys."

What they really like talking about is their farms and horses and Lynda's famous tamarillo marinade for the ducks she shoots. "That's what really excites us," said Jools or Lynda, or possibly both.

Jools talked, lovingly, about the baby clothes their mother knits. "There's something fabulous about a knitted garment that's tiny. You see a little cardigan or a little white jumper made out of soft white wool."

Lynda: "She's not talking about that she wants a baby!"

I had no idea what we were talking about; it was tea cosies at one stage. We were deep in Topp Twin land. But they were reminding me of another two Topps: their parents who, I say, are the other stars of the documentary.

Lynda: "You got that right. They're not only the stars in the movie, they're stars in real life. They've accepted everything we've done and the way we are. And there must have been times when it was hard for them. Not only were they having to deal with their daughters coming out, the whole of New Zealand knew as well."

Jools: "And if you notice, in the film, they never say gay or lesbian. Dad says, 'Well, they've never embarrassed us ..."' Lynda: "On that particular subject ..." Both: "Whatever you want to call it." Jools: "We couldn't have written that script!"

They have, I say - that gentle bickering, that 'young folk today' talk - turned into their parents. Jools: "Yeah! We all say, 'I don't want to turn into my mother' but we all have something of them and we carry that with us."

Lynda: "And you know what? Mum's old school. If you did something wrong you get a smack." Jools: "And it never did us any harm!"

She told a very funny story about how, "in our lesbian separatist days", they turned up unannounced at home when their mother was hosting a ladies' tea party. The door fell off the van, the three German shepherds got out and peed in the garden and all the ladies were peering out the window. The next morning Mrs Topp said, "Lynda, you waltzed in here like a man yesterday."

"And our brother wandered into the kitchen and I think it was the first time we realised he was gay when he said, with his little nose in the air, 'You're so butch.' Of course, he'd said he wanted to be a florist. That should have been a warning sign."

I asked if her parents had any theories on having three kids who are ... whatever you want to call it. Jools: "Dad did say there must be something in the water."

There must be, to explain the remarkably uncomplicated relationship with them. We went to a fancy cafe. Scones arrived. Complimentary? "Of course. We love you guys," said the young, gorgeous waitress. They have an uncomplicated relationship with each other. Lynda: "Why complicate things?"

There is a moment in the film when Lynda, talking about Jools' breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent mastectomy and chemo treatment, says that if she'd lost her twin she would have been "nobody".

That is both utterly simple and complicated. Jools says Lynda laughed her head off when her twin had her hair shaved off. She thinks it's funny that Lynda thought this funny. I don't know whether that's complicated or not. Perhaps it's a twin thing, or just an unconditional love thing.

Which might explain the appeal, of them - and of their documentary. Lynda: "It's real."

Any attempt to analyse them further would prove as elusive a pursuit as Ken's of Camp Mother. And who could improve on Ken's line on that Lady in Pink? They really are just bloody gorgeous. Simple as that.