“He’s a typical Scorpio who’s very passionate and likes a lot of sex,” Samantha Holdsworth joked when asked about her then-husband, former Wimbledon hot-shot Dean Holdsworth.
Samantha had settled down with the randy striker, who in the early days of the Premier League was one of the division’s top marksmen. Unfortunately for her, the Crazy Gang forward’s big sex drive soon got him in big trouble.
Holdsworth, who turned 55 today (Friday, November 8), wined, dined and seduced 18-year-old glamour model Linsey Dawn McKenzie after falling for her 36GG charms, in one of 1990s football’s biggest scandals.
In 1996, Holdsworth began an affair with the pneumatic Page 3 girl behind his wife’s back – and a scathing Samantha wasn’t short of words when she found out, after the saucy details were splashed over the pages of a national newspaper.
In response, Samantha famously posed for a photograph with her dog, who she claimed was more attractive than Linsey, blasting that the teen temptress was “uglier than our pet Rottweiler”.
(Image: PA)
However, Linsey, who went on to become one of the country’s most famous adult models, was also heartbroken, after finding out Holdsworth was married. “I was gutted, I’d really fallen for him,” Linsey told the People.
“He was fit, good-looking and wore stylish designer clothes. He told me he wasn’t sleeping with his wife any more and as I was only 18 at the time I naively believed him.”
Linsey said they’d met at a lap-dancing club where she worked in London and one of their liaisons had taken place on the bonnet of the future Bolton Wanderers striker’s £83,000 BMW, which had the personalised number plate SAM, after his wife.
The young model told how they later met up at the team hotel for some kinky fun involving champagne and strawberries, before the “very sensual lover” eventually had to call it quits because he had a game the next day.
And she told how the brazen star even took her to a home game, where she sat with other players’ wives and girlfriends, because he “thought he could get away with anything”.
After her partner’s affair was exposed, Samantha raged in an interview with The Sunday Mirror, telling the world: “Dean’s in the house but I’m certainly not sleeping with him. Nor will I. A lot of my love for Dean has gone.
“Marriage is based on trust and respect and obviously there’s none of that now. I’ve told him I don’t trust him an inch.
“Football clubs take players to the wrong places, like Tenerife, which is a haven for girls and sex. It’s so insensitive to the wives and girlfriends at home. They’d hate all the wives getting together and going to Tenerife for two weeks!”
Samantha would ultimately forgive Holdsworth, taking him back for the sake of their children, as she embarked on a pop career. However, unsurprisingly their marriage didn’t last, and they split before Holdsworth retired from football in 2008, before going into football management and now serving as a technical director at Kidderminster Harriers.
Linsey meanwhile went stateside, where she became a very popular performer in the adult entertainment industry thanks to her ample assets.