How Page 3 girl Sam Fox’s life is plagued by tragedy – ‘sexual assault’ by pop star to alcoholic dad and cancer battles
IT’S been 40 years since model Sam Fox first appeared on Page 3 in The Sun – and in that time she’s seen more than her fair share of heartache.
This weekend the star was hit by yet another tragedy after her sister Vanessa died suddenly following a heart attack, aged 50.
The sisters were very close; ahead of her 2017 autobiography, Forever, Sam told how Vanessa saved her when their alcoholic dad Pat attacked her.
Sam, 56, recalled: “I thought he was going to kill me and begged him to stop. When I tried to get up he kicked me so hard in the stomach it winded me and he wouldn’t stop.
“My sister Vanessa heard what was going on and jumped on his back to get him off me.”
Sam is said to be “beside herself” at the news of Vanessa’s death – which comes eight years after her long-term partner Myra Stratton died of cancer.
Myra was diagnosed in 2013, and passed away in 2015, aged 60.
Myra was Sam’s romantic partner and manager for 16 years, with the model-turned-pop star confirming her sexuality publicly the year they started dating.
Last month, the former Celebrity Big Brother star confessed she struggled with “pretending” to be happy after she died, and also couldn’t write any new music until she met new love Linda Olsen, 50, who she married last year.
Sam told MailOnline: “When my ex-partner died, I was with her for 16 years and that’s a long, long time.
“For two years, I couldn’t write a lyric. I just couldn’t write because everything I was writing was very sad and I didn’t want to show people I was in that sad place.
“It was very hard for me to actually release anything at that time and go on stage and pretend to be happy.”
She admitted Myra was the love of her life and she didn’t ever think she would meet anyone else, but believes “time is a healer”.
When she met Linda, she admitted it was “instant love” and, like her mum, she is her “rock”.
Cancer scare
Sam had her own frightening cancer scare last year when doctors found a 10mm growth in her throat, which she had removed.
The lump ended up being a benign polyp, but she was terrified she was going to die, having watched her partner go through it previously, before she was given the all-clear.
She told The Sun: “I really cried a lot. I’m such a positive person but it’s hard when you’ve got something like that hanging over you. I was very fearful.”
She added: “It felt very close to home, because I cared for Myra for so long after she was diagnosed with cancer in 2013. I saw her go down and down and down for two years.
“I watched her waste away and saw the amount of drugs she was on.
“That was seven years ago, but when I was waiting for my results it felt like yesterday. All of the memories came flooding back.
“My mum, who had breast cancer and came through it, told me not to think about the worst-case scenario.
“She is so positive and that’s how she got through it herself.”
Addict dad
Sam didn’t have the easiest of upbringings; her dad Patrick Fox, who managed her career until 1991, battled alcohol and cocaine addiction.
She once told how on once occasion, Patrick “went crazy” and started attacking her over a car radio, leaving her with two fractured ribs, a gash on her forehead and a black eye.
She told the Mirror: “I’d been asking him for months to put a radio in my car but he’d been too disorganised or drunk to sort it out so I asked my bodyguard Dave to do it.
“I was already on the floor curled up hiding in the corner and covering my face when he started kicking me and screaming, ‘You look like your f*****g mother. You’re just like her.’
“I thought he was going to kill me and begged him to stop. When I tried to get up he kicked me so hard in the stomach it winded me and he wouldn’t stop.”
After the assault she said she fled the house with blood in her hair, but a neighbour told her not to tell the police as it would ruin her father.
When she returned home to collect her belongings, she said her dad cried and begged for forgiveness – but she refused.
In 1991, Sam successfully sued him for embezzling £1million from her accounts.
She was awarded a £363,000 court settlement and only saw him once after that, before he died nine years later.
Despite not speaking with him much before he died, Sam said she has now forgiven him.
‘Sexual assault’
More trauma was to come – Sam claims she was sexually assaulted by late singer David Cassidy when she was 19.
She said he attempted to push himself onto her in the toilets of a restaurant after being aroused during a shoot for his single Romance.
Speaking on Channel 4 documentary Page Three: The Naked Truth, she said: “He was one of my biggest idols when I was seven or eight. I was a big fan.
“We did the shoot, he was quite excited. I don’t really need to say more than that. He was sweating all over me. I was thinking, ‘Wow, this was the guy who I looked up to.’”
Following the shoot, David – whom Sam described as a “first class creep” – is said to have invited her and her dad to join him for dinner at former celeb haunt The White Elephant in Chelsea.
She said she agreed to go along to the meal as she didn’t want her dad to suspect anything amiss had taken place.
But he followed her into the toilet, grabbed her breast and tried to put his hand up her skirt – to which Sam responded by kneeing him in the crotch.
She recalled: “I went to the loo and he came into the loos straight after me and pinned me up against the wall and tried to stick his tongue in my mouth and push himself against me.
“I got away. I went straight back to my table with my dad. Didn’t tell my dad. I was very fearful to tell my dad because he wouldn’t have liked it very much. No way.”
Stalker hell
David wasn’t the only creepy man Sam had to deal with. She was paying for bodyguards from the age of 18, as stalkers made her live a living hell.
Sam’s parents would even check her fan mail before she read it to make sure there was nothing inappropriate in it.
Speaking of her crazed fans, she told the Guardian: “It was hysteria, just to get near me. Most of them would touch my hair.
“You’d see them all breaking windows, and risking their own lives, and I had to escape in helicopters off roofs.”
One stalker even tried to kill himself outside of her flat.
“I realised how fanatical people could be,” she said. “He was French, and in his letters he said that I was his wife and he was going to kill himself if I didn’t come out and talk to him.”
Another extreme fan, from the US, changed his name to Sam Fox, sold all his belongings and moved to the UK to be close to the star.
She said: “He stayed at a bed-and-breakfast around the corner from me, so he could watch me.”