The Unconventional Career Of Britain’s Most Photographed Model

When people think of glamour photography models, the exact names that will come to mind can be grouped into particular eras, and a lot of them transitioned into other quite diverse showbiz careers, whilst others would move away towards a quieter life.

The latter part was unlikely for Samantha Fox, who started her career in an unconventional way, became the most photographed British woman of the 1980s and has continued to try almost anything in show business ever since.

Her career in glamour modelling and becoming a star during the peak of The Sun’s Page 3 largely came about by accident. She had an interest in singing and was part of a theatre school from the age of 15, although this would not last very long.

Her mother, actress Carol Wilken, entered photographs of her in lingerie to an amateur modelling contest run by The Sunday People, and when she placed second,

she was invited to pose with a professional photographer who was working for The Sun newspaper at the time.

She was asked at the end of the session to do a few topless pictures, got consent from her parents and became the youngest model to ever appear on page 3,

which got her in trouble but ultimately she transitioned quickly to a career in modelling.

She was an incredibly popular model during her time as a pin-up model, and win the Sun’s “Page 3 Girl of the Year” award three times in a row before she started to focus once again on her singing career, which had lay dormant since a pair of singles in 1983 and 1984 failed to chart.

Much like how she got into modelling, she was part of an open audition contest to sing a song that would become Touch Me (I Want Your Body).

When that song reached number 3 on the UK Top 40 and number 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100, she transitioned into a music career, although she would do one very popular comeback to glamour modelling in 1995 with The Sun.