YouSaid · the spoken record

Betty Driver

lines on the record: 50
first: 2011-01-23
most recent: 2011-01-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Oh Stephen Isalis, cello player. Gosh, he's a great friend of Stephen Hoff, the pianist, and I go to their concerts. They do concerts at this little church in a place called Grappenhall. Stephen Hoff plays the piano and Stephen Issel is. And of course Stephen Isselis is such a sweet man. I mean, it's so lovely and he walks on, I mean, before his moo he's sat down, I'm in tears because he walks on with this little battered cello and of course it's the one instrument in the whole orchestra that makes me cry because it always sounds so lonely and that lonely sound always makes me want to cry. I think it's so beautiful but is such a glorious glorious player.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know I don't see how you could be lonely with so much beauty around you and I just adore everything to do with nature”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, A mud about flowers I love the earth anything to do with the earth I'm madly in love with I would sooner have flowers than a meal”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before they liked the character and I've been very fortunate I had a character that could be liked deep down I was very kind to people more like a mother figure but now I'm a nana figure.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's wonderful we had one the other day, I think, a little boy. I am six. My nana is very poorly at the moment, and I think she's going to die. So will you be my nana because I love you? Oh, Ali can imagine the mess I mean when I'm reading that. It's amazing.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the company are very, very kind to me, I'm only usually in no more than two days a week. They're very wonderful with me, thank God. I'm not”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now then Hogi Carmichael Fabulous singer, lovely pianist, and he had a quaint voice, slightly hoarse and lovely. He used to do one little song that I absolutely fell in love with, and it was called Skylark.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I haven't any money. He's had it all. He went through whole fortune, completely gone He takes me to the airport, never speaks to me ever again. Dump me in the middle of the airport with my cases, and went left, didn't say bye bye, nothing, and that was it. That was my life.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because there you were with you I'm a stupid, that's why, because I just believed in marriage and I believe that, you know, you should try and all that kind of which is a load of rubbish really and I went there and from a lovely home I arrived in Johannesburg and he said Well he said we managed to get a flat I said oh good Well it was a bed in it a table, two chairs and a few pans, and I'd left this gorgeous gorgeous house. I didn't soul in South Africa and I stuck it for four months and then one night he came home at five in the morning and said I'm in love I said Well that's nice Who is she? he said Well I don't know her name I said have you spoken to her? No You don't know her name No and you're in love, said Wright. Oh well I said good luck to you So get on the phone to Frieder in Manchester I said will you send mimi fare home?”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Africa. When he came home one day, he said, Rajes, I'm going home on Thursday. This is Tuesday. I said, South Africa. He said, Yes, I said, Well, What do you want me to do is please yourself? I felt that in my life I wanted to be married, be happy to one person, and that was it, and it was just a hell of a shock when it didn't happen, you see. Anyway he went to South Africa, and he said, Well, you stop here, sell this then about three months time, come over to South Africa. Like an idiot, I did.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes, very good at that, yes. He wanted to be an agent so I bought him an office in Bond Street, and it had just happened to be Winnifred Atwell's husband owned this office, and Winnie's husband was very fond of me, and one day he went into the office to my husband and caught him with a girl there over the desk and gave him a damn good punching up and split his mouth and he foamed me up he said I'm afraid I've hit your husband I said”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. He was a very South African chap, he was a lovely guitar player, and he played guitar in my act for me, but he was very jealous because I earned the money. It just was just awful just.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it wasn't a very happy marriage, I mean, I think I did not a spite really to get away from my mother, got in with this man, and I loved him, but he loved other girls more than me.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh now then Ballet, I'm a very romantic person. You wouldn't think to look at me big and fat and old, would you? But I am very romantic. I love romantic music. I love Russian composers, and this one Chaikovsky Swan Lake.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“where my mother had to go home she had a very bad asthma. The day she went home my sister said Right We're changing all your music, we're changing your act, we're changing your gowns that's it and we did gradually together we chose wonderful matters An angel She began to tell me I was good which I'd never heard that word in my life and it was through Frida that I blossomed out”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You put it to bed No, I would never let it, because I've got nobody that bullies me. I think a lot of it was being bullied.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And of course, I didn't see the audience. All I saw was Henry's face, and he said you're fine, I'm with you, nobody's going to hurt you. The audience is still there, all crying I'm crying as well. But we started to sing this little song, and I sang it, and I finished the song, and from that day to this I've never been off”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was eighteen months, and I wouldn't go through the door, and Frida was my god. Then one day Henry Hall phoned through to Frida and said Is Betty any better, she said. Well, a bit better, she said, Look, I want you to try and get her to come and watch the bound. So we go to Nottingham Empire, and I'm standing on the side of the stage, and the band are playing and I think, oh, this is lovely. All of a sudden I hear Henry say. There's somebody on the side of the stage whom you love. and I would just like you to say hello to her she's been not very well And Frida pushed me onto the stage.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just couldn't cope anymore, I just passed out on the stage while I was singing. I just blacked out. And of course they drew the curtains over, and my mother threw a cup of water all over me and said Come on, get up you damn fog, stop play acting.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I adored him, but he was such a gentleman. He was wonderful to my sister and me, very kind, sweet man, and I'd had a very bad nervous breakdown, and he got me back. Help me back into my sanity back.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or number five My great dearest friend a black girl called Winnifred Atwell. She was a classically trained, but she made her name by playing hunky tonk music. I used to always have her on my variety bills'cause we were great friends, and she used to play the black and white rag. I used to love this.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And one or two murmured and I thought, Oh, this is awful. So I come off the stage and go in the audience, and I said, Now then, boys, come on, push these chairs back now, and then said, and I got one boy that sat on his knee nineteen he was God, you're so poor crying his eyes out, and I'm crying, I'm saying look, you'll soon be home. Don't worry your mum will still love you when you get home. Anyway, I sang to them for hours, and by the end of the time they were cheering, and the commanding officer said I don't believe it. I've never seen anything like that in my life, he said from dead people to alive, and it was wonderful. We danced until the early hours of the morning, and they all were normal boys by the time we left, and to me that was a most fantastic achievement if I never do anything else in my life.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh God, yes, dreadful. I think the thing that sticks in my mind, most of all I can't remember whether it's Holland or Germany, I'm not sure, but it was the last place that boys went to before they came home. and it was called a delousing centre. And we went there with hundreds of them in this hall, and they all looked dead, these boys. The commanding officer said, Well, I don't know whether they'll respond at all. Their faces were covered in white, all over, and they looked like ghosts. They put a powder all over them to kill any lice or anything that's on them. Well, they have no expression at all on their faces, nothing. They just look like dead boys. I said, Now then boys, I've got some very old songs, you know them, and I want you to sing with me.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yes. Yeah, she had a sweet voice, and she was a lovely little girl. I think she probably would only be about twelve or something like that, and she spent the entire week with me and Frida, and of course the night the bombing was on it was awful, and she slept in my dressing room, and Frida and I slept on the floor, and we spent the entire night like that, and when we went out the next morning of course Coventry was well, it was just flat, terrible, but I've never ever met Jul Andrew's sins, and I often wonder did she ever remember that night? I'm sure she must do.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I do. That was during the war. That was when Coventry was bombed, and we were there at the theatre there the actual night that it was bombed, and I had Julie Andrews in the dressing room with me as a little girl, and she used to come on and sing in a little frilly frock and little bows on the shoes and that did you.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh gosh, brass bams Oh I love brass bands Now I used to have a pub in Derbyshire so I had to travel from Derbyshire to Granada and stopped at some traffic lights and I could hear brass band music and I thought Wonder where that is and was following this noise must have looked insane followed it until we came to a little tiny single story building and Sir Harry Mortimer came to the door and he said Can I help you? I said Well I don't know I said I'm mad on brass bands and he said Oh it's you the hot pot yes So I go and sit there there I sat throughout their rehearsal It was wonderful beautiful”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because as you're saying that, yes, thank God. Thank God I have a tremendous sense of humour, a bit naughty sometimes, but I have a very, very good sense of humour because I”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, she never asked me to feed, don't know, don't know, no, no, No, I was the meal ticket, for the entire family. My mother, my father, my grandma, my granddad, my aunts, everyone. They all had a nice little share of my money.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, she drink or gamble. I don't know where she went or what she did, I don't know. We never did find out, Friedra and I.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, he could have, yeah, no, she didn't want to know. I think I had a couple of inquiries to go to do something on Broadway, but of course Mummy didn't want to know about that. We're not going there no way we're not going there. No. All she wanted me to do was variety.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was wondering redirected my first film. He was a kind, very kind man. He used to take me through all my scenes and say this is how I want it and I'll do try and do it this way so brilliant I'd no idea that people could be kind like that I thought you would just be shoved on and that was it but he was lovely”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These elephants Gerald. Oh, I'd think she thought she was so wonderful apparently she lived on the borders of Canada and America, and she used to get Coronation Street, and she watched every episode. She used to write to us, we sent her tapes and photographs, and she was such a brilliant technician. You know, she was magical, really. near to No matter dark.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh no, they had a feather that they moved As I say, I'd never seen anybody without the clothes on them. Aren't they rude, you know? How naive can you be?”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At about the same time, don't, yes, I happened to look to the side in the wings and saw a load of girls with no clothes on. Well, I'd never seen anybody with no clothes on ever. I was very shy. Then I looked the other side, and the boys were there with no clothes on, well that was the end of that. And I just grabbed my handbag, and off I shot down Shasbury Avenue. It was horrendous.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I had the same agent, as Gracie feels. One day I went to my agent's house, and a man and a woman stood there, this woman in a plastic raincoat like a leopard skin, and a head scarf on, and dark glasses, and big flat brown shoes on a thought. She'd probably come to a bit of cleaning she'd clean up. My agent came down the stair, says, Oh, hello, Betty, darling, I says, You've met Grace, haven't you? I said, Oh, it's a great pleasure, and Grace if he has looked at me from the bottom to the tumchament. Likewise, I'm sure, and that's his only thing she ever said to me. She was very jealous of me because I was only when I went into the show that she had made famous I was fourteen, the leading lady.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yes. Oh yes. She wanted me to be like Gracie Fields, and I did not want to be like Gracie Fields, and I would not sing like her. Did you?”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she studied and she had a promising career. That's the awful Was she one of those? Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. What she would have loved to have gone on the stage, but of course she had no talent. In a word Oh God, I don't know a very strange life very.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was a very beautiful colour at your soprano, and I had her trained at the Royal College of Music, but my mother didn't want to know about that. She said No, no, variety is all right for us, and she finished it, and just absolutely broke Frieda's heart.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yet Stephen Hoff, great friend of mine, a world class pianist Oh I just think he is so wonderful and I would love you to play the Chaikovsky's piano concerto it's gorgeous”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, there's no point. I think she always wanted to be on the stage and never really achieved anything, so that was the nearest thing to me bunging me on you as a little girl. I mean, she used to stand on the side of the stage, and obviously this night I didn't do it, and came off and wham straight across my face, and had to go and take a curtain call with his great big red handmark and crying. Oh, it was awful, really awful, but she was just a go getter. I don't know whether it was I never saw any money, I mean my mother did all the money bits, so Frieda and I got about half a crown a week, and when I was twenty one I got ten shillings a week. Isn't it awful, really?”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes my grandma and my granddad, my mamma and my dad and aunties and that all there but we never got anything and we never got a kiss only on New Year's Eve. The bells would go for New Year's Eve and my dad would say Happy New Year a kiss on the cheek and my mum would grudgingly say happy New Year that's it That was the love for the year.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We always had a Christmas tree and Daddy used to put lights on it and it was lovely and Frida and I used to put our lights. Never, from the age of I think seven was the last time we ever had a pres”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my mother was so strong that I think my dad just he just gave up he was a sweet person, but he just gave up she was so domineering that there was nothing you could do about it.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every day, I said you're going to do it no matter what No love attached at all, I mean nothing. We never got a kiss. We never got a present, nothing”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I did a season in rep when I was about eleven. But it was very good for me because it taught me how to learn lines and how to enter on to a stage and I don't know it was probably very, very good for me.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to apologise to start with for playing this piece of music which I can't stand I can't bear my voice I hated it when I did when I was eighteen and I'm ninety now and I just can't bear it but all my friends like it you see so well it when I was making a film I got a contract to do three films and this was this song was in one of the films. quite well and I thought I'm going to be a big film star oh lovely you know I finished a three films and then the war broke out and all the contracts were cancelled so that was the end of my filming career I've hidden these records I've got really old records right at the back of the wardrobe so nobody would find them at all but my friends The little squirrels, you know, they found this and it's called I'll Take Romance.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm dreadful, I'm terrible cook. My friends, I've got seven men friends, and they all know I'm rubbish in the kit. I really am rubbish. I mean, I bought some steak the other week. I looked at it and I thought, it's a bit thick that. I bet that'll be tough. And I hammered hell out of this piece of meat. You could have sold your shoes with it. And of course, I tried to eat it at the end. No way, went straight into the bin.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We took a little pub in Derbyshire, and one day the phone went, and it was executive produce of Coronation Street, he said, Could I come and see you? I said, Don't miss a daft. It's a pub, course you can come and see me. Yes, come on. So he came round and said, What's the matter? He said, Well, you're pulling piety. Why don't you come and pull pints and the rover's return? I said, Where's that? He said in coronation streets. I said yes, well, we'll probably do about six episodes, and I'll be back. Forty one years later I'm still churning our top pot. It's amazing”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We had no happiness when we were little, mere my sister Frieda, no, we went to a different school each week, which was horrendous, so you never really caught up on any education. It was awful we had a mother that was a matriarch, and she just wanted me to be in the theatre, irrespective of whether I wanted to or not, and she wanted me to sound like Gracey feels, and I hated Gracie feels. So constantly it was a battle.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just love people, you see, and I love the cast. I've made tremendous friends, I mean, when you're in the theatre, when you're doing variety, you work for a week and you meet somebody, you may never meet them again, so you don't really make friends. When I join the street, I've made friends, and I'm the happiest person in the world. It's just like a big family, and I just love it.”
2011-01-23 · Desert Island Discs · Betty Driver · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source