Mandy Smith

Mandy Smith lived in Tottenham as a child. She met Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman when she attended the BPI Awards with her older sister Nicola in 1984, when she was 13 years old. Wyman was 47, but wrote in his 1990 autobiography: "She took my breath away...she was a woman at thirteen." The relationship only became public two-and-a-half years later, when she reached the age of 16 (the legal age of consent in the United Kingdom) and resulted in a firestorm of publicity.[2]

In 1986, Smith was to be interviewed on Irish television show Saturday Live, but cancelled when broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) decided she would be interviewed from a seat in the audience rather than on the set. RTÉ said she was "not important enough" and that she might "give a bad example to young teenage girls".[3]

Smith and Wyman married on 2 June 1989 in a civil ceremony on his Suffolk estate; she was 18 and he 52. Smith had by this time developed health issues which she blamed on being on birth control pills since the age of 14, when she said her relationship with Wyman was illegally consummated; not long after the wedding, she weighed only 80 pounds. Wyman reportedly grew impatient with her health problems and she moved out only weeks after they wed; the marriage officially ended in divorce after 23 months. Smith won a settlement then worth a reported $880,000 US dollars.[2]

The story took another surprising turn in 1993, when Wyman's 30-year-old son from his first marriage, Stephen, married Smith's mother, Patsy, who was then aged 46.They split after a two-year-marriage.[4]

On 19 June 1993, Smith married footballer Pat Van Den Hauwe, but this marriage also lasted only two years.[5] She published a best-selling autobiography, It's All Over Now, in 1993.[6] In 2001, she was briefly engaged to Vanity Fair fashion model Ian Mosby with whom she had a son, Max Harrison Mosby.[5]

Smith later moved to Manchester to run a local public relations company with her sister Nicola. In 2005, she returned to the Catholicism of her childhood after one of her former schoolteachers, a nun, "told me Jesus does not look at the mistakes I have made or the times I have ignored him".[7] She stated in 2010 that she was celibate at the age of 40 and had begun working with and counseling troubled teenagers.[8]

In 2010, Smith publicly called for the age of consent in the United Kingdom to be raised from 16 to 18, saying "People will find that odd coming from me. But I think I do know what I'm talking about here. You are still a child – even at 16. You can never get that part of your life, your childhood, back. I never could."[8]

While still dating Wyman, Smith signed with songwriting/producing trio Stock Aitken Waterman and launched a career as a teen pop singer. Her album, Mandy, was released in 1987 and spawned modest hits in several European countries with songs like "I Just Can't Wait" and "Boys & Girls". Success at home in the UK, however, eluded her.[5]

Around the same time, Smith also worked as a print and runway model for fashion designers including Katharine Hamnett.[9]

• Mandy Smith at IMDb