06-29-2006 – hour.ca – Foxy Lady
This in an interview with Samantha Fox where she talks about meeting Freddie.
by Richard Burnett
British pin-up Samantha Fox knew she had finally arrived when she found herself rubbing elbows with British pop royalty in a nightclub above London’s iconic Barkers department store on Kensington High Street 20 years ago this summer.
“It was an outrageous party! The place was filled with naked women painted green,” Fox recalls. “And everybody was there: Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Pet Shop Boys, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, even Gary Glitter. And Queen was playing. I had just one song, but Freddie Mercury pulled me up on stage and said, ‘Do you know Johnny B. Goode?’ And I said, ‘Yeah!’ So we sang it together!”
Fox’s “one song” was, go figure, the worldwide chart-topper Touch Me, and as for Queen, Fox says, “They threw the greatest parties. I remember looking at Freddie as a kid and I said, ‘When I’m a performer I want to be like him.’ I’m a good singer. I’m no Barbra Streisand but I give a good show. And that’s what he did.”
That work ethic has stood Fox well because, 20 years after Touch Me topped the charts worldwide (including seven weeks at number one in Canada), Fox is still making records and performing around the globe. In fact, her current album, Angel With an Attitude, was recorded here in Montreal; she rediscovered our city after being invited by Divers/Cité to perform at Gay Pride in 2004.
At that time Fox, now 39, had just freshly come out of the closet after years of being a fiercely heterosexual pin-up girl, beginning with her four-year stint as a London Sun tabloid “Page Three
Girl” when she was 16. “Page Three is an institution. It’s like a seaside postcard. My mom and I would talk about it over breakfast.”
Describing the day after her first Page Three spread, Fox says, “Construction workers blew wolf whistles at me! My life changed very quickly. I was very famous at 16. I always dreamed of being in show business, but I hadn’t planned on this.”
Back then few thought she was a dyke, not even Fox, who later went out with Paul Stanley of KISS (who some suspected might be queer himself) for two years.
But Fox told The Mail on Sunday in 2003: “I’m gay. I was one of England’s biggest sex symbols. When they asked men who they would most like to sleep with, my name always came up. I couldn’t say I was sleeping with women. But I can’t continue denying it. Everyone knows I’m in love with Myra [Stratton, her manager] and want to spend the rest of my life with her.”
Today, Stratton is still Fox’s manager. But when I ask Fox about her own personal coming out, she quips, “I’m not talking about that. Just go to Google.”
That doesn’t stop Fox from trashing the current crop of showbiz stars and wannabes, though. “I’m glad I worked for what I got, that I’m not famous just for being famous. Today people are famous with no talent at all. And big stars today are so cagey about their private life. That’s why these no-talents don’t mind talking about their private lives. That’s what people want. I don’t go into details about my love life [any more]. There’s been so many journeys.”
She does, however, admit she is a tomboy. “I love boxing, martial arts, and I used to play football for the Arsenal Ladies.”
About her split with her late alcoholic father who used to be her manager, Fox says, “He ripped me off. Lots of money. [Then] he lost control of his little girl. I grew up and became my own person. I wasn’t a Page Three Girl any more, I was an international star.”
These days, Fox continues to travel the world like an international star, including recurring trips to Montreal to visit friends.
She doesn’t top the charts any more (“We’re coming out with a 20th anniversary remix of Touch Me”), and she may no longer discuss her love life, so could it be that Fox believes being an out dyke – especially one who used to be a Playboy playmate and Page Three Girl – is the commercial kiss of death?
If Fox has thought about it, she’s not saying.
But that should come as no surprise from the hard-working girl who worshipped Freddie Mercury, who himself remained publicly closeted until just before his death from AIDS in 1991. (How could the world not have known anyway, with a name like Queen?)
But Fox has a few choice words for young gay men.
“Freddie was a loner. He died alone,” she sighs. “It was terribly sad when he died. So it’s very frightening to see a new generation not thinking about safe sex. I also believe in monogamy, and I hope people will stay together rather than sleep with everybody in sight. I’ve seen enough of my friends die of AIDS.”
