My crazy life as 90s Gladiators pin-up…from scandalous affair with contestant to warped stalker & telling off from Queen
FORMER Gladiators star Vogue was adept at overcoming obstacles - both in the arena and when it came to grabbing a man.
In an exclusive interview the 52-year-old aerobics champion, who was a fan favourite after joining the Saturday night TV show in 1995, reveals how she won over contender Mark Roberts.
The athlete turned podcaster, whose real name is Suzie Cox, thought “oh, he looks quite nice" when she spied him in at a bar near where Gladiators was filming in Birmingham.
Gossip among what she dubbed Planet Gladiators went round like wildfire, so that everyone knew Suzie fancied Mark before they even spoke to each other.
It turned out that Mark had a girlfriend but that didn’t get in the way of the pair getting together in 1997.
Mark turned on the charm and claimed he needed to come to her hotel room for the ‘air conditioning.’
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Suzie says: “Eventually we did spend some time together chatting away from everybody else and obviously we clicked so he had to sort out his previous relationship because he had a girlfriend which wasn’t particularly going that well.
“Eventually he ended up coming to my hotel room claiming it was because I had air conditioning. We’ve been together 28 years now."
Mark reached the quarter-final and in the same year the pair got married, having two children, Amber and Flynn.
That was clearly a major plus of being a Gladiator.
But being Vogue has had its ups and downs for Suzie.
The Londoner, who was a European aerobics champion in 1993, got the chance to become a Gladiator via her friend Diane Youdale, who was Jet.
Hotel stalker
The 5ft 6in tall Gladiator was an immediate hit on the show, but some of the fans went too far.
In the same year she met Mark, Suzie was plagued by a stalker who came to the hotel where the Gladiators always stayed.
She recalls: “I had a stalker. Because everyone knew where we were staying we were kind of a target.
“Every Gladiator would get fan mail and the security guys would handle that. Mine was being filtered because one guy was writing letters to me, it just didn’t make sense.
“Then I was told he was waiting outside the arena and he would wait outside the hotel.”
One day he managed to get into the hotel and was heading to her room but the security guards got to the stalker before he got that far.
When the obsessed ‘fan’ came back, one of her fellow Gladiators stepped in and had a word.
Suzie continues: “Then a few days later he was back again and Saracen went out and had a little chat with him.
“He sat on the wall with him, he said to him, ‘you’re upsetting my friend. What are you doing?’ That was his version to me anyway.”
Thankfully, the quiet word from the 6ft 3in tall Saracen had the desired effect.
The other downside was that even though Suzie was a serious athlete, she felt she was treated as a ‘glamour girl’ by the TV show’s producers.
Suzie comments: "In the 90s we female Gladiators were still seen as glamour girls with pretty hair, looked pretty on TV.
We were stereotyped as just big muscly people who weren’t very bright
Suzie Cox
And even though Suzie “loved wearing lycra” she says that the tight-fitting Gladiator costumes did not look so flattering in real life.
Suzie smiles: "Our costumes looked good on TV but they were awful close up, really awful."
She largely avoided serious injuries but was aware how dangerous clobbering competitors high up could be.
Suzie remembers: "My first year doing Gladiators, at the end of season party I remember there were so many people injured - it was accidental stuff.
“They may have twisted their ankle or something because there’s a lot going on and people got hurt."
There were plenty of perks, though.
Firstly, there was a massive boost to her bank account.
Suzie says: "It’s a great paid job, so you could afford things which you may not before such as buy a house, cars, that type of stuff."
They also got to meet lots of famous people.
When she was in pantomime one year, future Prime Minister Tony Blair told her how much he loved watching Gladiators.
Unfortunately, the late Queen, Elizabeth II, was less impressed by watching young women bash each other.
Suzie recalls: “I had done the duel game against one of the army girls there and one of the other girls got injured.
“I was very lucky to get selected to go there where the Queen was. And she shook my hand and said, ‘Ooh, it’s not very lady like is it, what you’ve been doing?’ And I sort of nodded and smiled.”
But the late Prince Philip didn’t mind see the lycra-clad women at all.
She adds: “He was very excited about the girls standing there not wearing many clothes with very large physical ‘instruments’. So, it was a very different female and male perspective.”
Shock ending
When the original Gladiators show came to an end on ITV in 2000, the fame came to an end with it.
So much so that Suzie was made to feel bad about once having been Vogue.
She reveals: “What was a big shock for me when Gladiators show finished, for very short period of time it was a bit of a naff thing, it became a bit awkward."
If you mentioned it, the responses were you were a ‘has been’. Which was really hard to deal with for me.
Suzie Cox
Suzie found herself at home but enjoyed spending more time with her two children.
She has since developed several businesses, including working as a public speaker, sports massage, voiceover actor and podcaster.
Her latest podcast called Not Another Couples Podcast includes her husband Mark, who also owns a gym.
Vogue is impressed by the BBC Gladiators reboot, which is currently in its second season.
She comments: “Most of them that I’ve seen so far are amazing. They’ve got rugby and other sports backgrounds, they’ve got big strong big girls who don’t necessarily look like glamour girls."
But she does think that some of the challenges have become too easy.
Vogue explains: "What I was very disappointed with in this series was with The Gauntlet. That was really my big disappointment in the games, because our gauntlet was one of my favourite games.
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“There were five of us and hardly anyone got through. Whereas in this new show, it’s guaranteed someone will get through. "
She adds: “There’s another game, The Ring where they have to run in and they have to be wrestled to the floor. Again, it seems too easy for the contenders to just run in or get to the middle.”