Dame Jools Topp, the guitarist, songwriter, performer, and activist who spent five decades as one half of the Topp Twins — New Zealand’s most beloved entertainment duo — died on May 23, 2026. She was 68. The cause was breast cancer, a disease she had fought with characteristic courage and openness since her first diagnosis in 2006.
Born Julie Bethridge Topp on May 14, 1958 in Huntly, New Zealand, Jools and her twin sister Lynda grew up on a dairy farm in Waikato, singing together from the age of five and picking up the guitar at eleven, a gift from their older brother Bruce. After leaving Huntly College in 1976, the twins briefly joined the New Zealand Territorial Force before embarking on a career that would make them two of the most recognisable and widely loved figures in New Zealand cultural life. They started where all honest careers begin — busking on the streets of Christchurch and Auckland in the 1970s and 1980s — and built something that lasted fifty years.
The Topp Twins were not simply entertainers. They were country and folk musicians with tight harmonies, gifted comedians with a roster of brilliantly drawn characters, and committed political activists who used their platform consistently and without apology. They performed at the Bastion Point land protest in 1978, at the 1979 United Women’s Convention, at protests against the 1981 Springbok tour, and at anti-nuclear and homosexual law reform demonstrations throughout the 1980s. Both women came out as lesbian in the late 1970s, at a time when doing so in public carried real personal and professional risk. They did it anyway, and kept doing it, and their openness became part of what made them so important to so many New Zealanders.
Within the duo, the division of labour was clear and complementary. Lynda led the comedy and crowd work. Jools played guitar and led the songwriting. Their characters — the stereotypical Kiwi blokes Ken and Ken, and the magnificent Camp Mother and Camp Leader — became beloved New Zealand institutions. Jools played Camp Leader, the one who pushed back against the domineering Camp Mother, and she played her with a timing and physical commitment that made every scene land. They appeared on New Zealand television for decades, hosted a quiz show, presented a cooking series, and won virtually every award the New Zealand entertainment industry had to offer, including the Best Entertainer award at the 1987 Listener Film and Television Awards and induction into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame in 2008.
The 2009 documentary ‘The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls’, directed by Leanne Pooley, brought their story to international audiences, winning audience awards at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival among many others. In 2018, both sisters were appointed Dames Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to entertainment. Their 2023 memoir ‘Untouchable Girls: The Topp Twins’ Story’ won the Nielsen BookData NZ Award for best-selling New Zealand title of 2024 — a final, fitting recognition of just how deeply the country loved them.
Jools Topp was also a skilled horsewoman, a passionate advocate for horses and the people who worked with them, and someone who answered her phone while riding bareback in her arena, because of course she did. She was that kind of person.
She is survived by her twin sister Lynda. New Zealand has lost one of its originals.