Model role for a Levi’s jeans genie
Nick Kamen Model and singer BORN APRIL 15, 1962 – DIED MAY 4, 2021, AGED 59
ON BOXING Day 1985, Nick Kamen became an overnight heart-throb as girls and women of all ages watched him strip off in a launderette for a Levi’s 501 television advert. Dressed only in crisp white boxers and white socks, Kamen, a barely known model then aged 23, triggered a stampede to clothes shops as Levi’s bosses toasted an 800 per cent jump in sales.
Readers of Just Seventeen and other teen magazines couldn’t get enough of him, especially when he told them he enjoyed playing bass guitar in bands.
A swooning Madonna helped him launch a pop career in 1986 when he made the most of his blue eyes, Elvis-like smile and rippling physique. She even sang backing vocals on the song she wrote for him, Each Time You Break My Heart, which reached No 5 in November of that year.
Dismissing rumours of romance, Kamen insisted Madonna was only interested in his voice. Kate Moss harboured a secret crush for years before admitting to a magazine that she wanted to marry him. In 1987 he reached No 16 in the charts with Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever, which had been a hit for the Four Tops in 1966.
Another song, Nobody Else, only made it to No 47 in the charts.
Italian women took him to their hearts, keeping his single Tell Me at the top of the charts there for nine weeks in 1988. They were very pleased when he was granted the Freedom of Rome.
Kamen also proved successful in other European countries.
His song Turn It Up featured on the soundtrack for the 1989 Disney film Honey I Shrunk The Kids but his pop bubble seemed to burst after his 1990 single, I Promised Myself, hit the No 1 spot in eight European countries.
Amanda de Cadenet, who dated him for several years, admitted staring at him while he slept. “There is never a time when he
doesn’t look good,” she said. Around this time he took an interest in painting, producing many abstract works, and later tried to launch a video company but that proved unsuccessful.
Born in Epping, Essex, Ivor Neville Kamen was one of eight children. The death of his brother
Barry, a model, in 2015 was a devastating blow.
His father Neville met his mother Zoe while serving with the military in Burma, and Kamen attributed his striking looks to his Javanese, Dutch and French ancestry.
He died of bone marrow cancer at his flat in Notting Hill, London.