Early Life
She was born in Beckton, East London, England. Her uncle Henry was a harp player and her mother was a main influence in developing her musical ability. She took piano lessons from the age of 3½ to the age of seven.
While working as the superintendent of the typing pool in the office of the Paymaster General in London, she was spotted by a talent scout at a Woodford Golf Club dance near her home in Loughton, Essex (where she lived most of her life). In December 1961, she made her first television appearance on The Billy Cotton Show. By the end of January 1962, she would be a household name.
Read more about this topic: Mrs Mills
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Young, and so thin, and so straight.
So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.
But poor men would bend her, and doing things with poor men,
Being much in bed, and babies would bend her over,
And the rest of things in life that were for poor women,
Coming to them grinning and pretty with intent to bend and to kill.”
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