Nikki Webster: Where is our favourite Sydney Olympics mascot now?

If you were in Australia for the Sydney Olympics in 2000, you’ll have a favourite Olympic memory. Of course you will! This was our chance to be part of the action! To witness sport history in the making!

But what we were most into as the Olympics rolled into town, was Nikki Webster.

You can argue all you like, but the truth is pretty much non-negotiable: Nikki Webster was the highlight of the Sydney Olympics.

My seven-year-old obsession with Nikki Webster was a little over the top, I admit. I wanted to be her (curly hair included) and also be her best friend and also be in the Olympics, and would they maybe let us do an Opening Ceremony duet where the two identical Nikkis sang next to each other?

Alas, the Nikki-as-Nikki and Zoe-as-Nikki duet wasn’t to be, but I watched her sing in that opening ceremony with wide eyes and a full heart.

Okay, I cried a bit. It was emotional.

When Nikki's single "Strawberry Kisses" was released a year later, I couldn't deal. I was in ecstasy. NIKKI WEBSTER WAS SO COOL I COULDN'T AND WOULDN'T HANDLE IT.

I remember watching the video clip for the first time and being AMAZED. What about that ANIMATED ROBOT DJ, AMIRITE? Luckily, all my year one friends were on board the Nikki train, so we listened to the "Strawberry Kisses" single approximately 1,657,900,393 times.

Although other video clips have since attempted to be cooler, edgier, or better animated, than "Strawberry Kisses", I think you'll agree upon rewatching that it remains the greatest production ever on Earth and also in Robot Space.

Watch "Strawberry Kisses". You won't regret it. I pinky promise. 

Today, I read that Nikki Webster is all grown up. (Not like that creepy issue of Zoo Magazine announcing she was "all grown up", but actually, properly all grown up).

She has a two-year-old daughter, Skylah. She looks good, but more than that, she looks... normal. Happy. Chilled-out. Like a regular mum with regular stuff to do.

For work, she runs three performing arts studios with her brothers in Sydney, a job she loves. And speaking to The Daily Mail, Nikki describes her life as pretty normal for a working mother.

"At times I’m at home and I do regular mum things and at other times I’m at work and at other times I get to do fun things like perform, get up on stage and do interviews. So I have three areas of my life, it’s all very different."

Like most mums, she's looking forward to sitting down with her daughter and watching the Rio Olympics this year.

"To sit down and watch the Olympics with her will be a pretty proud moment for me. To show [my daughter] that you can work hard and fulfil your dreams and whatever she wants to do, to follow her passions and dreams and I will support it."

It looks like, without knowing it, my year one gang of cronies chose... well, quite a good role model. She's doing a job she loves, raising a family and not worrying too much about what other people think.

It's possible she doesn't even remember singing about kissing on an intergalactic space station with a team of dancing robots.

But I remember, Nikki.

And I'll never forget.