BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

The following post is dedicated to any Christian readers who may have somehow discovered this blog. Now, far be it from me to cast the first stone ; I know most regular readers couldn't give a fig for religion, but while chatting to me old mucker Philip 'Don't be a sinner, be a winner!' Howard on Oxford Street, I've come to the realisation that a shower of lefty bastards want to BAN Christmas and replace it with some godawful (sorry) 'multi-faith' celebration - no doubt one that'll see our children co-erced into enacting fake beheadings and fellating Durex-wrapped bananas by the ex-SWP scum who've infiltrated the nation's classrooms! So, to prove that Christianity isn't exclusive to the wonderful world of POP, BTi offers you the true and terrible story of Sam Fox - the disco queen who found Christ but lost the plot!

Samantha Fox is by no means the only pop convert to Christianity. We all remember how Cliff Richard, backed by the sinisterly-named rock group The Shadows, recorded voodoo-fixated filth like 'Living Doll' before finding God in America, and using his newfound superpowers to spread the word of The Big Yin. And how he was rewarded! - there's few other celibates who could get away with releasing a single that recites The Lord's Prayer over "Auld Lang Syne", performed in front of a video screen displaying footage from the liberation of Auschwitz. This wasn't even back in 1959, but just a mere five years ago!

Rap fans may remember the brilliant Gangsta Boo, who used to appear with Three 6 Mafia. Few would have predicted that the girl responsible for tracks like "I Faked It Last Night", "Kill, Kill, Kill, Murder, Murder, Murder" and "Suck A Little Dick" would eventually see the light and re-moniker herself as Lady Boo. Similarly, power electronics fans will be familiar with the miraculous conversion of Milano noise artist Maurizio Bianchi to the Jehovah's Witness sect. As legend goes, in the late 1990s, some MB fan with way too much time on his hands contacted every 'Bianchi' in an old Milan phone directory, until he tracked down Maurizio at a monastery. Which does beg the question, if MB was meditating in a monastery cell , how did the superfan get through to him via his old flat phone number, from 10 years before? This miracle can be explained in two ways - 1) it's a load of publicity-seeking bullshit 2) the man responsible for terrifying noise classics such as "Symphony for a Genocide" and "Mectpyo Bakterium" actually lived with his parents at the peak of his recording powers.

But Samantha Fox - what a tale. It may surprise foreign readers, but back in the early 80s, this girl was seriously hot property. Sam was a cockney schoolgirl who had her own band and a deal with an independent label, before realising that, having been blessed with unfeasibly large breasts, she could escape the world of punk bands droning on about unemployment and nuclear war by becoming a Page 3 pin-up in the tabloid daily 'The Sun'. As funnyman Frank Carson would put it, "It beats working!!". Fox would later go on to pose in high-brow jazz mags like 'Playboy', but it wasn't until 1985 that she wowed school disco first-date snoggers all over the land with her debut single, "Touch Me".

Listening to this track 20 years on, it's obvious that "Touch Me" has all the makings of a classic record. The chorus is superb, Fox's voice is actually OK (even better than the amazing Sabrina's, if we're to be brutally honest) and the only really grating part, sonically, is when the guitarist ( a baldie in a bandanna with long hair at the back, if I recall) breaks into some thoroughly inexcusable 'axe-wanking' half-way through the song.

The lyrics are also slightly disturbing. If Stacey Q's hi-NRG classic "Two of Hearts", with its chorus of "Two of hearts, two hearts that beat as one" passionately invoked the spirit of socialist solidarity, the third verse of "Touch Me" encapsulated the brutal individualism of monetary capitalism, so rampant in Britain at the time :

"Hot and cold emotions confusing my brain/
I could not decide between pleasure and pain /
Like a tramp in the night, I was begging for you /
To treat my body like you wanted to"

As well as sounding unpleasantly masochistic, the reference to a "tramp in the night" revealed a sneering confirmation of most pop fans' worst suspicions - namely, that like a sad minority of working class people who come into easy money, Fox had turned into a SNOB.

These suspicions were confirmed by Fox's wicked and cowardly act of class betrayal the following year. The Wapping printers' strike in 1986 was a tragic re-run of the violence police had been meting out to striking miners in previous years. Fox was enlisted by her paymasters at 'The Sun' to break through the picket line in a tank. This cheap and nasty publicity stunt was made all the more sickening by the fact that the printers were regularly being roughed up by the cops. Fox, to her eternal shame, actually went ahead with this sordid farce, making her, by accurate definition, a "scab".

Class traitor Fox later reaped the rewards of her reprehensible actions. Her target new yuppie mates were far too busy listening to Sade' (broadcaster Robert Elms' girlfriend) and her smooth 'wine bar jazz' crooning to bother with a "big-mouthed bird with big tits". Fox attempted to revive her flagging reputation by co-hosting the Brit Awards with geriatric rock star Mick Fleetwood in 1989, a performance which has gone down in the annals of pop history as ranking slightly below the sinking of The Titanic.

There was only one answer - Fox fucked off to secure a career in the lucrative Bollywood film industry. I'm not 100% sure whether her press agent's claim that she was "the first Western woman to appear in a Bollywood movie" is true, but what IS clear is that if Bollywood fanatics were prepared to flock to the cinema to watch her song and dance routines, they were clearly disposed to watching any old shit. This is something to bear in mind next time Andrew Lloyd Webber enthuses about the dusky, exotic appeal of this simply spellbinding and culturally rich film industry.

In 2001, Fox returned to our screens, claiming, in a bizarre sequence of press conferences, that she a) was now a lesbian b) had found God c) wanted to become a female vicar. (( Part C isn't mentioned by her press agent on the official Sam Fox website, but I remember it clearly, from when the tawdry item appeared on Carlton's "London Tonight" programme).

It is easy to understand Fox's leap into Christianity, but has it done her any good? Subsequent TV appearances have seen her tottering around in a catatonic daze or blowing her top, perhaps resulting from alcohol abuse, or even the demons still haunting her from her disgusting 'tank' stunt back in 1986. Perhaps the Lord, in His infinite mercy, will one day forgive her her trespasses. Unfortunately, few of the rest of us can. Chicklets, don't sell out to The Man.


THE REV MARTIN CONMAN XXX