Samantha Fox, a British pop star and former model, was removed from a plane and arrested after an alleged drunken dispute with a neighbouring passenger ended up grounding the plane overnight.

Fox, 56, was forced to spend a night in a jail cell after she boarded a British Airways plane heading to Munich and became caught in an argument with another passenger on the flight.

The plane was ready to depart London’s Heathrow Airport and was taxiing on the runway in preparation for take-off. However, it was eventually grounded and returned to the terminal after Fox “kicked off”, according to sources.

The passengers were disembarked and were subsequently accommodated in a hotel because the flight could not be rescheduled. The plane made the journey to Munich the next day.

A woman was arrested on the presumption of being drunk on board an aircraft and disrupting the flight service, police said. The woman in her 50s had been released on bail until March.

British singer Samantha Fox has been hit with several tragic incidents in recent years. Photo / Getty Images

Fox has expressed that she is “deeply sorry for any disruption caused”, and said she would help the authorities in their investigation into the incident.

The former Page Three model was left devastated in March last year after her younger sister, Vanessa, died of a sudden heart attack at only 50.

The siblings were close to each other and shared experiences that no sisters would want to go through together. Before the release of her autobiography, Forever, in 2017, Fox described how Vanessa had saved her from their alcoholic dad, Pat, when he attacked her during a drunken rage.

“I thought he was going to kill me and begged him to stop. When I tried to get up he kicked me so hard in the stomach it winded me and he wouldn’t stop,” Fox reflected at the time.

“My sister Vanessa heard what was going on and jumped on his back to get him off me.”

The most recent incident is yet another blow for pop legend Fox, who began her career modelling for The Sun in 1983. Her long-term partner and lover, Myra Stratton, died in 2015 at age 60 after a battle with cancer.

Mere days after Fox had shot her Celebrity MasterChef appearance, the news of her younger sister’s death came to light. The singer gave an emotional overview of her time on the cooking show during an interview with The One Show last year.

“I’d practised [for MasterChef] for a good couple of weeks with my sister as my sister is a fantastic cook. She’s always done the best cottage pie ever and so we practised together and I taped it — she’s my younger sister, you can hear her bossing me around and going ‘You’ve got to clear as you go, clear as you go!’ Unfortunately, I lost my sister just after the filming of MasterChef,” she recalled.

“So yeah, my cottage pie was my sister’s recipe and I’ve still got all of her pots and all of her mashed-potatoes things. She’s gonna be so proud and she was so proud when I got the show because she’s a massive fan of the show,” Fox said.