She couldn't even play tennis but, back in the late Seventies, Fiona Walker made a lot of men very interested in the sport. Athena's Tennis Girl poster, which shows Walker's bare bottom as she lifts her short white dress, has been described as one of the sexiest posters ever made.Now the face behind the iconic pose has been photographed beside the poster, for the first time ever, to help launch Court on Canvas - an exhibition exploring tennis as a subject in art.
Fiona Walker poses next to the iconic Athena poster she appeared in in 1976
The exhibition runs from May 27 to September 18 at Birmingham's Barber Institute of Fine Arts, making it a return home for the photograph which was taken at Birmingham University. Walker's appearance at the launch was tinged with sadness as Martin Elliott, her ex who took the picture, died last April following a ten-year battle with cancer. Both Walker and Elliott had married others since the photo was taken.
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Tennis Girl was immediately a top seller for poster producers Athena back in 1976 - although Elliott held onto the copyright and was still getting royalties more than 30 years later. A teenage boy's bedroom was not complete without the image in the late Seventies and early Eighties, and today the original posters sell for up to £300 on eBay.
Celebrity fans include Jonathan Ross and Ricky Gervais. Both Kylie Minogue and Alan Carr have recreated the pose - to varying degrees of success. Elliott took the picture in the summer of 1976 after persuading his 18-year-old girlfriend, who was called Fiona Butler at the time, to pose with some borrowed tennis equipment.
A teenage boy's bedroom was not complete without the poster in the Seventies
Elliott said of the original picture: 'People say this image is timeless, and while I'm not sure how long timeless lasts, over 30 years is a good start.' He also dispelled rumours about the image that claimed the model was male or androgynous saying:
'I can confirm the image is as it seems.' Walker, on the other hand, always encouraged different theories. 'It gave me quite a buzz because I could secretly smile and say "no you're wrong", every time someone guessed. 'I remember going to a party with my husband and people were saying "is that the girl in the photograph?".
Fiona puts her tennis whites back on in 1980
'They looked me up and down and said "I don't think so".' Walker's pose today is all the more significant because she has only agreed to being photographed, in relation to the tennis photo, once - back in 1980 when she posed in her whites again but kept a black jacket on throughout the shoot.
The absence of other photos has contributed to creating an air of mystery around the image. Elliott says: 'If I had a pound for ever model that has laid claim to being the girl, and every photographer that has claimed they took the photo, I'd be a very rich man.'
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