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Samantha Fox
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Samantha Karen "Sam" Fox (born 15 April 1966 in Mile End, London) is an English former glamour model and dance-pop singer.
he eldest daughter of the late Patrick John Fox and Carole Ann Wilken, Samantha Karen Fox came from a family of market traders in the East End of London. She has a sister, Vanessa, who is six years younger, and a half-sister, Frederica, from her father's second marriage.
She attended St Thomas More RC School, Haringey, and took a keen interest in the theatre from an early age.
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Encyclopedia
Samantha Karen "Sam" Fox (born 15 April 1966 in Mile End, London) is an English former glamour model and dance-pop singer.
Background
As the eldest daughter of the late Patrick John Fox and Carole Ann Wilken, Samantha Karen Fox came from a family of market traders in the East End of London. She has a sister, Vanessa, who is six years younger, and a half-sister, Frederica, from her father's second marriage.
She attended St Thomas More RC School, Haringey, and took a keen interest in the theatre from an early age. She first appeared on a theatre stage at the age of three, and was enrolled in the Anna Scher Theatre School from the age of 5. Her first television appearance came in 1976, at the age of 10, in a BBC play entitled No Way Out. Following on from this, she started at the Judi Dench Mountview Theatre School, near her home in Crouch End, at the age of 11.
Interested in music from an early age, she formed her first band, with Richard Smart on guitar and Bob Day on tambourine, at the age of 14. Her first record deal came a year later, with Lamborghini Records. However, both her theatre and music careers went on hold when her modelling career took off.
Modelling career
In early 1983, Carole Fox photographed her teenage daughter wearing lingerie and submitted several pictures to the The Sunday People newspaper's "Face and Shape of 1983" amateur modeling contest. Judged joint runner-up in the contest, Fox had her pictures published, and was soon after invited for a test shoot for The Sun newspaper's Page Three feature. Her parents gave their consent for their daughter to pose topless, and on Tuesday, February 22, 1983, Fox's first Page Three photograph was published under the headline "Sam, 16, Quits A-Levels for Ooh-Levels."
Fox's Cockney background, bubbly-blonde looks, winning smile, and 36D breasts made her an enormously popular Page Three model. After famously insuring her breasts for a quarter of a million pounds sterling, she won The Suns Page Three Girl of the Year award for three consecutive years between 1984 and 1986. She also posed nude for several British soft-porn magazines, although very few full-frontal shots were ever published.
Fox retired from Page Three modelling in 1986, at the age of 20, by which time she had arguably become Britain's premiere sex symbol of the era. In 1995, aged 29, she made a one-off appearance in The Sun to promote Page Three's 25th anniversary week. After receiving an overwhelmingly positive reader response, she appeared in the slot every day during the anniversary week, with Friday's final topless picture given away as an A3-sized poster. In 1996, aged 30, she appeared in the October issue of Playboy magazine. These were her final published nude photos.
Fox's father Patrick, a former carpenter, managed her career until 1991, when Fox hired accountants to trace over £1 million that she believed he had embezzled from her accounts. She then sued her father, who by then had divorced and remarried, and in May 1995 she was awarded a £363,000 court settlement. Patrick Fox died in 2000, at which time he and Fox had not spoken for almost a decade.
Samantha Fox was, in a online vote held by the British Newspaper the Daily Star, voted by its readers, as 'The best page 3 pin up ever' in September 2008. As a result of the poll win, she appeared topless for the first time in 12 years in the Daily Star although on page 5, not page 3.
Music career
In the late-1980s, Fox began a successful singing career, producing three albums in three years (1986-1988), and working with notable music producers such as Stock Aitken Waterman and Full Force. Her debut single, Touch Me (I Want Your Body), released when she was just 19 years old in March 1986, made the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic (#3 in the UK; #4 in the US). It also topped the charts in many countries, including Canada, South Africa and Australia. Her debut live performance came at Peter Stringfellow's club Hippodrome. Fox had three Top 10 hits in both the United States and Britain. In Canada and the U.S., Naughty Girls (Need Love Too) (#3 in the US; #8 in Canada) and I Wanna Have Some Fun (#8 in the US; #10 in Canada) made the Top 10; whereas British audiences put Do Ya Do Ya (Wanna Please Me) (#10 in the UK) and Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now (#8 in the UK) into the Top 10. Her successful singing career resulted in Fox touring the world, including such places as Bosnia, Russia and Ukraine. In total Fox achieved 8 top 40 hits as a solo artist in the UK And 4 other singles found a place in the top 75 in this country.
After a 3-year break, Samantha Fox released her fourth and final album in for Jive Records in 1991, entitled Just One Night. The album mirrored her previous work on 1988's I Wanna Have Some Fun, by presenting a mix of old school hip-hop style tracks featuring Full Force, along with a collection of pop & rock tracks. Just one Night became a hit for Fox in Canada. In 1992, Jive released Samantha's first official compilation, Greatest Hits, which featured three new tracks.
In 1995, Fox attempted to revive her singing career again by participating in the "Song for Europe", the competition to select the UK's entry for the annual Eurovision Song Contest. She performed Go for the Heart, as lead singer of the group Sox, but failed to reach Eurovision after finishing 4th in the public vote. Go for the Heart was released in Europe and became a chart hit in the Netherlands. In 1997, she released a new album 21st Century Fox. The album featured Eurodance and Hi-NRG music. The album was released in the US a year later with the lead single Let Me Be Free. 21st Century Fox became her first indie release. She also co-wrote and produced many of its tracks. Other singles from the album are Deeper and The Reason Is You. This is the album that made her a bigger favourite with her fan base. In 1998 Fox teamed up with DJ Milano who produced the club hit Santa Maria. The track charted in the UK and reached #1 in Austria as well as top 40 positions in other European countries. In 2004, Fox teamed up with Mats Söderlund (alias Günther) in order to do a remake of Touch Me (I Want Your Body). This version reached #1 on the Swedish Singles Chart and included remixes by dj alligator and lounge mixes. This version also charted in Greece, Finland, Norway and became a firm favourite with clubbers around the globe appearing on many dance and hit compilations. In summer 2005 Fox featured on the Superchumbo album 'Wozie Zowie' and recorded the house track Sugar. The track received rave reviews and was a underground hit in the clubs for most of 2005 appearing in many dj charts across the world. The track also appeared on various House Hits compilations.
In November 2005, Fox released her latest album, Angel with an Attitude, in Canada. For the album, she chose to work together with the award-winning producer Joe Barrucco.
Fox toured Australia throughout late-August and early-September 2007, as part of the Countdown Spectacular 2. Songs performed were "Do Ya Do Ya (Wanna Please Me)" and Touch Me (I Want Your Body).
On August 24, 2008 Samantha Fox performed in Poland in concert of stars of the 1980s, together with Kim Wilde, Sabrina, Sandra, Modern Talking, Limahl and Shakin' Stevens. The concert was a part of Sopot Festival 2008 and will be presented live on Polish channel TVN.
Samantha will take the stage at the Pepsi Centre in Quebec City on April 11, 2009 as part of an "1980s" concert along with Debbie (Deborah) Gibson, and Rick Astley.
Fox's films
Fox's pictures gained her such fandom in India that she was invited to star in a Bollywood film . This was written and directed by V. Menon, starring Shammi Kapoor, Kamal Sadanah, Ronit Roy, Sharon Prabhakar, Javed Jaffri, Johnny Lever etc. It also featured guest appearances from Govinda, and was produced by Subbir Mukherjee.
Fox also featured in Its Been Real written and directed by Steve Varnom, and starring John Altman, and The Match written and directed by Michael Davis, starring Pierce Brosnan, Ian Holm, Tom Sizemore, Neil Morrissey, David Hayman and Ilar Blair.
On From Under the Cork Tree, Fall Out Boy have a track called "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me" referencing the movie Sixteen Candles and Samantha Fox's album Touch Me (the title also references the posthumous dance hit by Elvis, "A Little Less Conversation").
Fox turned down the opportunity to join the cast of Eastenders in 2008, claiming she wasn't a fan of the show
Other sidelines
In 1986 Fox was featured in a strip poker game (Samantha Fox Strip Poker) for Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MSX, BBC Micro, and Amstrad CPC.
In 1989, Fox co-presented the BRIT Awards with Mick Fleetwood, which became notorious for turning into a shambles; Fox has asserted in interviews since that the autocue did not work properly that night, leading to utter chaos during the show's live TV broadcast. She spent a year in New York presenting pop promo videos for MTV, and she made other attempts at TV presenting, including an interview with Rolf Harris, which was ill-fated even before it started as Fox referred to her interviewee as "Ralph" on several occasions, although he got his own back by resting his beard against her neck and tickling her with it. She appeared on the sitcom Charles In Charge in 1990 where she played the role of "Samantha Steele", a fictional rock star whose agent pushes her to romance Charles Scott Baio in order to get the paparazzi to print it in the tabloids. In the story line, it was done for career publicity reasons since people seem to enjoy some controversy. She also appeared in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for Spring Break, where she sang her various then current hits to thousands of college students.
Fox featured in the ITV programme 'An Audience With... Ken Dodd', during which she asked him how he liked to use his famous chuckle-duster, a multicoloured feather duster. Dodd responded by nonchalantly moving into the audience and letting the item stroke Fox's collar, before violently plunging down it her cleavage, making her scream and giggle.
Fox's career went quiet as she grew older and she was not commercially successful in her singing. However, this has not stopped her working. In 2003, she appeared in ("reality television") show The Club, competing against Richard Blackwood and Dean Gaffney by trying to run the most successful bar in The Club, which was full of celebrity guests such as Jordan.
She also featured in a promotional advert for digital channel UKG2, In which she sat in a perspex box while a vat of live eels was poured in. It took a large number of takes as on several occasions, the eels made their way down Fox's top, with her protesting that they were tickling her.
In August 2004, Fox was featured in a music video with Swedish music artist Günther in the song "Touch Me" (a remix of her earlier version). The album, Pleasureman, on which this version of "Touch Me" is featured was released in the US on Rhino Records in 2006. The single spent several weeks at #1 on the Swedish Chart.
In 2008, Fox and her partner Myra took part in Celebrity Wife Swap, exchanging with Freddie Starr and his wife Donna.
Fox has been signed to appear as a talent judge on the American music show called "Putting on the hits", which will be an updated version of the popular 1980s televised weekly program.
Personal life
Fox was twice linked to Australian con man Peter Foster. They dated in 1986-87 and then, after a seven year separation, they reunited in 1994 for a year. They were at one time reportedly engaged to be married. During this time she and Peter decided to adopt a young Australian boy named Simon. Tragedy struck when Simon accidentally ingested a bottle of alcohol and was then rendered comatose. Fox described Foster as "the love of my life". She has also been in relationships with Paul Stanley, the singer and rhythm guitarist for the band KISS.
In 1994, it was reported that Fox had become a born-again Christian. That year, she played at the Christian arts festival Greenbelt. When queried about how she could reconcile topless modelling with her Christian beliefs, she said:
Rumours regarding Fox's sexual orientation began to surface in 1999 when she judged a lesbian beauty pageant, and many people said they believed that the woman she lived with at the time, Australian Cris Bonacci, formerly guitarist with Girlschool, was more than just her manager.
In February 2003, she made a statement about her personal life:
Fox participated in the television show Celebrity Wife Swap with her partner.
In 2009 Fox came third in a poll of the UK's most attractive older lady in Saga (UK) magazine, behind Davina McCall (2nd) and Amanda Redman first.
Charitable activity
Samantha Fox has donated her favourite bra to a charity auction which will see fans able to buy a piece of celebrity clothing. Sense's Strip It Off three-day auction will begin on March 4 and will see members of the public bidding for stars' garments in order to raise money for the deaf blind charity.
Discography
Touch Me (1986) Samantha Fox (1987) I Wanna Have Some Fun (1988) Just One Night (1991) Greatest Hits (1992) 21st Century Fox (1998) Watching You, Watching Me (2002) Angel with an Attitude (2005) Angel with an Attitude (2007) - Australian re-release with 1 bonus track
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