«We weren't built for this. It's been a great career»: Sam Fox on being a girl on page 3. Photo: Graham Robertson/eevine
«Am I making weird faces?» Samantha Fox asks after learning that I first saw her appear on Celebrity MasterChef. “Because I make faces when I concentrate. I bite my tongue…and squint! Am I squinting at the show? My God, at least you can say I didn't have Botox!» She is laughing. “I have friends whose eyebrows are now half raised…”
Now 57, the 1980s glamor model turned pop star is enthusiastic and does serious interviews. She's thrilled to be talking to a Telegraph reporter in an East London kitchen she's just redone «because I've got an old picture of me from the Telegraph on my wall because the blush I'm wearing for this shoot fits to this old pink guitar that I also hung up…
Although she admits that «the bottom of my stomach almost fell out» after she agreed to appear on TV's toughest competitive cooking show, Fox tells me it was her late sister who told her to «go for it.» Vanessa Fox — six years younger than Sam — died suddenly of heart failure at the age of 50 in March. “I don't think Vanessa ever missed an episode of MasterChef,” her sister tells me. “So I used her shepherd’s pie recipe. I thought about people who are struggling to feed their children in a cost of living crisis and I thought about how Vanessa could feed herself, her partner and four children in a large baking dish with minced meat, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots and bow. Affordable, healthy food for the working class.»
Born in Mile End in 1966, Fox tells me she was «always my mother's sous chef» as a child. In 1977, her mother underwent gallbladder surgery and «went into intensive care after the surgeon cut her bile duct». Young Sam went to the stove. “My grandma taught me how to cook spaghetti bolognese with ham, eggs and chips,” she recalls. “I liked to surprise my dad when he came home from work with a full English breakfast, I was very proud of it.”
The carpenter, Fox's father, Patrick, did not repay her kindness. In previous interviews, she spoke about his addiction to alcohol and cocaine and described how one of his rages left her with two broken ribs, a cut forehead and a black eye. She fired him as her manager after she suspected he had stolen a million pounds from her, and when he died in 2000, she didn't speak to him for nearly a decade.
Sam Fox's late sister talked her into appearing on Celebrity MasterChef. Photo: Production
But today, Fox prefers to have a more casual conversation and focus on his transformation from shy, bullied schoolgirl to pin-up country's most beloved. “As a child, I was disabled, and other children can be terrible when you are different,” she says. To correct a hip problem, Fox wore a caliper and platform shoes. “It was very hard,” she recalls. But she still liked sports youth. “I loved football, martial arts… I swam for the Harings. After school, I camped, played knockdown ginger and kiss chase.» She got along well with boys, but «was difficult with girls». Does she think they were jealous of the attention she got from guys? «Looking back, yes, definitely.»
She was only 16 years old when her mother introduced her to compete in Sunday's 1983 Face and Shape competition. The photographer who took her picture as a finalist remarked, rather unsettlingly, that she had «the face of a child and the body of a woman.» When The Sun's editors saw the pictures, she said they were amazed by her «natural, approachable, girl next door» and offered her a three-year contract to appear on Page 3. The intimidated disabled child quickly became one of them. of the most photographed women of the 1980s, along with Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher.
She has repeatedly spoken about how well she was treated as a glamor model and wrote in her book that one of the two sexual assaults she experienced in the 1980s was perpetrated by pop star David Cassidy, who hired her for her to appear in the video for her album. , Romance, 1985 In her memoir Forever, she described how he pushed her against the wall of the closet and shoved his tongue into her mouth. She quickly hit him with a knee in intimate places.
«Looking back, my bullies were jealous»: Samantha Fox as a model in 1986. Photo: ColourNews/Alamy Stock Photo
She is glad that the MeToo movement is «making sure we know who the nasty people are» and angry that «it was too late for some. Jimmy Savile, [Geoffrey] Epstein. I met Jimmy Savile in the 1980s. I was on Jim'll Fix It. Everyone in the business knew about him and I can't believe it took so long [to solve his crimes], to be honest.» But Fox also believes that some girls are “taking advantage of the MeToo situation. They know the man is married. Take Donald Trump, the girls who are trying to sue him. They knew he was married. They took the money, they knew what they were doing. They did not suffer and are now trying to make money from it. We must focus on listening and helping women who are really hurt, who are really vulnerable. Phew, I don't know…”
When I remind Fox that in the most recent sex scandal in the country, there was a man looking at pictures of a 17-year-old girl (this story is published in the same tabloid that paid her for topless pictures at 16), she says: «We can have children at 16, right? And I was almost 17 when I first appeared in The Sun.» There is a sigh. She is clearly tired of defending her past.
“The generation of children growing up today looks much worse on the Internet than a topless girl in a newspaper. What happened to teenage boys who hang pictures of Samantha Fox, Pamela Anderson and Ferraris on the wall? When you look back, it was fun. We were not forced to do it. It's been a great career. Some girls chose to go down a path that was a bit quirky, but Linda Lusardi, Susanna Mizzi, Corinne Russell and Samantha Fox (she does regularly refer to her professional persona in the third person), “…we all kept doing great things. I introduced the Six O' Clock Show. I gave Page 3 a brain!»
Fox did move quickly into a second career. As a teenager, she played in a band, and at 21, she signed with a record company looking for a «British Madonna». She sold 30 million records and later earned £60,000 as a songwriter for All Saints.
Fox came out as gay in 2003. She was in a relationship with her manager Myra Stratton for 16 years until Stratton's death. from cancer, at age 60, in 2015. Fox devotedly looked after her for two years after she was diagnosed and told me that while Stratton loved cooking shows, she couldn't enjoy her food near the end. “I don't want to talk about Myra today, dear,” she says. Fox prefers to focus on the happiness she has found with her current partner, Norwegian Linda Olsen. The couple met in 2016 and married in 2022.
«I kissed a few frogs in my time,» Fox chuckles, «but I eventually found my princess.»
Celebrity MasterChef runs Wednesday to Friday on BBC One at 9pm
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