Top 22 Quotes by Kiki Dee

I was never particularly academic, so it was no great surprise when I failed my 11-plus and consequently went to Wibsey Secondary Modern. I did all right in English, history and music, which were the subjects that most interested me.

In my late 30s, I flirted with the idea of having a child without necessarily being in a steady relationship. But I've never had a strong maternal urge, and then I got cancer of the womb - luckily caught at an early stage - so that put paid to that.

We had idyllic summer holidays, building sandcastles with my father on the beach at Bridlington. It might sound strange, but I think that secure cocoon of familial love was so nourishing, it gave me the strength to live life on my own.

I was born Pauline Matthews and grew up in Bradford as one of three children - I had an older brother, David, and an older sister, Betty. My father Fred worked in the mills as a textile weaving supervisor, and my mother, Mary, was a housewife.