Early Life
Betty Driver was born in 1920 at the Prebend Nursing Home, Leicester, the elder of two daughters of Frederick and Nellie Driver. She weighed 5.5 kg (12 lb). Her father had fought in the trenches during the First World War and later became a policeman. However, it is her mother whom Driver described as "the driving force" in her life. Driver commented, "the only way I can explain her behaviour is that she wanted to live out her ambitions through me."
The Driver family moved to West Didsbury, Manchester, in 1922, where they resided in a semi-detached house alongside other police families. Driver went to school at Wilbraham Road and was later joined there by her younger sister Freda, who shared a class with a young Pat Phoenix, who would play the role of Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street.
Driver described her parents as absent of affection, stating that they never celebrated birthdays and rarely gave her toys and gifts. Though she maintained her father never beat them, their mother "more often lashed out". Driver's mother never wanted children and developed an interest in her daughter only when she discovered she had a talent for singing. When she was 7, the Drivers went to see a production called the Quaintesques, a group of men dressed as women, when the star, Billy Manders, asked the audience to join in with a chorus. Driver's singing stood out so much that Manders asked her to come forward and sing with him. From then on, Driver's mother began taking her to various talent contests in Manchester, and she won them all. She has commented, "I imitated hits by Gracie Fields such as 'Sing As We Go', and 'The Biggest Aspidistra In the World', corny little numbers that I detested but mother adored I think she was a frustrated performer herself and she was determined that my sister Freda and I were going to fulfil all her dreams."
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