All may be quiet in her music career, but Samantha Mumba blinged it up on the red carpet, proving diamonds are an upstager's best friend, writes Fionola Meredith
Hogging the limelight is second nature to any bootylicious starlet worth her salt. It's what they do best, after all. But when young Irish chanteuse Samantha Mumba turned up to the UK première of Spider-Man 2 minimally draped in a very expensive spangly web, she elevated the modern art of "upstaging" to a new plane.
Upstaging merely involves making a dramatic entrance at a film première wearing an ultra-revealing designer dress. Once you arrive, make sure to strut, sashay and shimmy about on the red carpet while you accept the adulation of the crowd. You have a choice of possible expressions: perhaps the astonishingly artificial moue as perfected by Victoria Beckham, or you could go for the girlish, lip-biting, peeping-up-from-under-the-eyelashes look that Sam chose. Either way, the real stars of the film will be left to scuttle in un-noticed to their own première as you frolic elegantly for your fans. That's it - simple. And never known to fail. Plus, you're guaranteed to be all over the newspapers the next morning.
Upstaging was brought to a fine art by Liz Hurley and her legendary appearance in a safety-pinned number (now forever known as "that dress") at the première of Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994.
However, other starlets have eagerly followed Ms Hurley's short-cut recipe for instant media attention.
TV presenter and actress Kelly Brook bared both bottom and breast in her €12,000 scrap of a pink-sequined dress at the 2000 première of Snatch. Meanwhile, model Jodie Kidd stole the show at the premiere of the original Spider-Man movie in 2001 with a skimpy web-influenced dress uncannily similar to Mumba's.
Of course, it only adds spice if the upstager has an axe to grind - witness former S Club singer Tina Barrett's appearance at the Seeing Double film première in a barely-there €27,000 red number, slammed by the red tops as a cunning move to "steal attention from S Club's sexiest girl Rachel Stevens".
Wearing what looked like a cleavage-rich nightie, Rachel Hunter made a strategic move to "out-dazzle" ex-husband Rod Stewart's new babe, Penny Lancaster, at a sports awards bash in Monaco last year. She later elegantly underlined this victory by being chosen as Penny's replacement as the face of lingerie firm, Ultimo. Sisterhood, eh? But what makes Samantha Mumba's appearance different is the price of her outfit. Her diamond-encrusted gown cost €7.5 million and she was wearing €37 million worth of jewellery. The 21-year-old admitted, "I have got tons of bodyguards looking out for me, just in case bits fall off." The dazzling frock, which incorporated 3,476 diamonds, was created by British designer Scott Henshall - who was hovering close at hand to make sure the dress stayed in place. "Despite what it looks like, this dress feels very comfortable," said Samantha. Ah yes, Sam. Comfort really is a priority in these situations. That'll be why you're wearing a nice big pair of M&S pants underneath the sparklers - not.
Samantha's web-wear is expected to enter the Guinness Book of Records as the most expensive dress ever made; as a consequence, the singer was constantly escorted by security guards on the night. "Scott made this dress especially for me and I'm so excited to be wearing it, though I'm a bit nervous because it cost so much money," she cooed to bug-eyed reporters.
A claim only slightly undermined by the fact that two weeks ago child-prodigy turned tabloid totty Charlotte Church said she'd been asked to wear the frock first.
Born to an Irish mother and Zambian father in Drumcondra, Dublin in 1983, Samantha Tamayna Ann Cecilia Mumba is no stranger to the limelight. Her parents enrolled her in the city's renowned Billy Barry Stage School at the tender age of three.
Samantha made her first TV appearance at the age of four. But she was no child star, she insists.
"All it meant was that I'd get the odd day off school. And I loved it."
It's evident that Samantha was desperate to be famous. She remembers staying over at a friend's house when she was about 12, and saying that, if she had to, she'd run naked across a football pitch to get her 15 minutes.
Educated alongside some of Ireland's most prominent pop stars (including Westlife's Brian McFadden), she abandoned her education in pursuit of fame at age 17 when she landed the lead role in a modern adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
Mumba's breakthrough into the music industry came when she was introduced to Louis Walsh, manager of Irish pop stars Boyzone and Westlife, who helped secure the singer a deal with Polydor Records. Mumba recorded her internationally successful debut album Gotta Tell You shortly afterwards, seeing the eponymous single from the album shoot straight to number 1 in Ireland in a record-breaking four days. Evidently her slickly-produced pop/R 'n' B sound has its fans, but she remains a deeply conventional doyenne of the syrupy ballad: her songs are full of soft and sappy lyrics such as "Let me take you to a milky way/We'll ride the stars 'til the night becomes the day".
She was, however, a breath of fresh air in the tired urban pop-lite scene. And she seemed to have plenty to say for herself: "There are a lot of female artists my age around at the moment, but they're all American and blonde and blue-eyed and smiley. I'm totally the opposite of that. I want to show a bit more attitude and I have an opinion".
Self-styled "baby diva" Mumba has more recently embarked on a parallel acting career, most notably as a primitive future-world inhabitant in the 2002 big-budget cinematic remake of H.G. Wells's influential novel The Time Machine, where she starred opposite Jeremy Irons and Guy Pearce.
But lately it seems we haven't heard as much from her. Although she regularly pops up in the gossip columns, romantically linked with Robbie Williams or her latest squeeze, bad-boy American R 'n' B star Sisqo, there has been something of a dearth of hit singles, and her burgeoning film career appears to have stalled. Her 2002 album I'm Right Here was considered by many to lack the freshness of her first album. One critic commented, "now she's off down the path to being another wannabe R 'n' B diva. She won't get there with stuff like this".
Is it churlish to suggest an inverse correlation between a starlet's success and the length of her hemline? As the former declines, the latter whizzes ever upwards, as a kind of emergency remedial action on a faltering career. And it can be a dramatically effective remedy. Trouble is, Sam has always scorned this kind of blatant shenanigans. In 2001 she had a go at female performers who try to grab the headlines with tiny costumes, claiming that their tactics simply didn't work. She told celebrity magazine InStyle: "I think it's a bit sad to wear a bikini to sell records The guys may look and go "Phwoarr", but they won't go off and buy your record. You don't gain."
Oh Sam. Did those fine, upstanding words come back to haunt you as your nipples twinkled teasingly through the holes in your Spider-Man dress? Or did you just kick back and relish the intoxicating feeling only a hundred flash bulbs exploding in your face can generate? You do have the satisfaction of successfully upstaging the female star of the film, Kirsten Dunst, whose own white Chanel gown bore a rather unfortunate resemblance to one of those dollies your granny may have used to disguise the toilet roll.
Dunst's dignified response to the attention deflected away from her - "I don't mind about making the front pages. I just want to wear something beautiful" - did nothing to diminish your ascendant star that night.
Let's hope the spangly web worked, and that Sam finds herself deluged with career-enhancing offers she just can't refuse. Flashing your flesh is a time-honoured way for popstrels to get on in life. And it proves that Sam's all grown up now. After all, there's no place for those earnest youthful principles in the cut and thrust of showbiz. Or is there?
Who is she?
Irish R 'n' B popstrel turned film actress
Why in the news?
For wearing an itsy-bitsy, staggeringly expensive, diamond-encrusted dress to the première of Spider-Man 2 in London
Most appealing characteristic
Endearing refusal to use her body to promote her career
Least appealing characteristic
Wearing a dress that indicates she may have decided using her body to promote her career might not be such a bad idea
Most likely to say
"Would you like to take another shot of me? And another? And another?"
Least likely to say
"Pass me a cardigan, would you?"