Chart entered : 22 March 1986
Chart peak : 3
Number of hits : 13
I don't suppose Samantha will ever be taken seriously as a musical artist but scoring over a dozen hits is nothing to be scorned.
Samantha was born in 1966 in the East End to a market trader and obscure actress. She herself attended the Anna Scher Theatre School. In 1982 her mother sent some lingerie photos of her to an amateur modelling competition run by The Sunday People . She was the runner-up but The Sun still invited her to pose for Page 3. Her parents gave consent for her to pose topless and she first appeared in the paper in February 1983 when she was 16 -this would all be illegal now of course. Samantha quickly became popular with their "readership" and she was given a four year modelling contract.
Samantha had musical ambitions as well and got a deal with Lamborghini Records. She released her first single under the name S.F.X. in October 1983. "Rockin With My Radio" is a tinny Europop number written by some French guys on which Samantha sounds like a 10 year old , getting shriller with each line. She recorded a couple of other tracks with them "Aim To Win " and "Holding" which were released as a single in Scandinavia. The former which had Bruce Woolley and Theresa Bazaar among its co-writers is a real dogs dinner with attractive and ugly bits hopelessly intertwined. Both were released in the UK after her success with this one but rightly ignored.
By 1986 Samantha was close to fulfilling her contract and decided to have another tilt at pop stardom. She was now considerably more famous ( and wealthy ) than last time around and had no difficulty getting a deal with Jive. "Touch Me ( I Want Your Body ) " was written by Mark Shreeve, John Astrop and Pete Q Harris none of whom had much of a track record but they came up with a winner here. That may be because both musically and lyrically it's pretty close to Laura Branigan's Self Control from a couple of years earlier, which like this one, was a monster hit across Europe. Unlike Laura, Sam only had a thin voice but it was serviceable , the closest comparison being Kim Wilde. The general reception to the record was "this isn't as bad as we thought it was going to be". It remains Samantha's biggest hit.
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