She’s been a Page 3 girl and then received an award from Mother Teresa, but lately the singer has been eating rodents in the jungle. Here’s our interview with Samantha Fox

In I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! you had a spider in your mouth. How did you cope?

My boxing trainer had said to me: ‘Just remember nothing can kill you.’ So that’s what I was thinking to myself, ‘nothing can kill me’. I have a little mouth … and it jumped out about three times, the bastard.

My worst fear was that I would swallow it and it would have babies or something, and I was like: ‘Am I gonna have a million spiders born in my belly?’ It’s not the baby I want! I thought after that I could do anything. Then Katie Price came in and got all the trials [laughs].

Did you feel sorry for her?

Yeah, I did, as a woman you know? I remember seeing her shaking.

Were you involved in Ratgate?

I was there … I got the ribcage. I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, there’s no meat on this’. I was like ‘Is that it?’ It tasted like chicken or rabbit. Gino [D’Acampo] made me feel better when he said they’re not like the rats in London, they don’t rummage around in faeces …

They were quite friendly, really. I had one around me all night … I remember thinking it’s just like a hamster but with a long tail.

You ate the little hamster!

Oh no, please don’t. There were many of them, right. And Stuart [Manning] and Gino said we’d get one for dinner cos we were starving. Me and Lucy [Benjamin] were like ‘Please kill it humanely.’

You became a Page 3 girl at the age of 16. Were you mature enough?

At the age of seven I was going to stage school … I had my first band at 15 so I was edging towards that life anyway. There are a few kids out there who probably couldn’t have handled it but I was ready for it.

I was the youngest ever Page 3 Girl and given a four-year contract. It was the first time that had ever happened, so I felt very privileged, very secure.

You were a sex symbol to millions of blokes but secretly you knew you were gay – did you feel like a fraud?

I didn’t know I was gay at an early age. I was very inquisitive, you know? I don’t believe in labels, I believe in love and attraction. I never knew what I was until I met Myra [Stratton, Fox’s manager and fiancée].

But I knew I was attracted to women. My first crush was The Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner and I loved Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music.

Touch Me went to No.1 in Oz. Were you blown away by the success of the song?

I just knew when I heard it. I remember Madonna came out with Like A Virgin and the record company had read that I loved to sing. They auditioned me for Touch Me – there were 200 girls there. I learnt it for two weeks and envisaged myself as Madonna, giving it my all.

You were huge in India too.

We went there with a band. They drove us onto Rajiv Gandhi Cricket Stadium and we were like, ‘What we doing here?’ We played for three nights to 70,000 people and had to borrow extra PA equipment from Jethro Tull who were there the night before.

I did a Bollywood film not long after … and sang Touch Me in Hindi … And then I got an award from Mother Teresa! I went to a Catholic school and every weekend I’d put money in the hat for Mother Teresa. Next thing I know, I’m getting an award from her for being the Most Influential Woman, amazing!

Samantha Fox Greatest Hits out now through Sony.

Interview: Alison Grinter