Singer Beverley Knight lifts lid on childhood as she visits former Wolverhampton schools
Who would have known this studious, fresh-faced schoolgirl from Wolverhampton would go on to become a global singing sensation?
Beverley Knight today opened her childhood photo album to the Express & Star, offering a glimpse into her life as a schoolgirl growing up in the city.
Images show a young Beverley, who is originally from Penn Fields, as she poses for her junior school picture, lining up alongside her classmates and as part of the school netball team.
The 40-year-old singer delved into the past as she visited pupils at her former schools, Woodfield Infant, Woodfield Junior and Highfield School, all in Penn.
Beverley visited the Woodfield schools to wish pupils there luck before their centenary year begins in September.
She also returned to her Highfields roots to officially open its brand new £44 million facilities, a complete rebuild under the Government's £270m Building Schools for the Future programme.
And she introduced herself to delighted youngsters in the classrooms at her old stomping grounds.
Pupils took their chance to quiz the Shoulda Woulda Coulda singer, who answered honestly and told the youngsters how she started out singing in class assemblies at Woodfield.
Her favourite assembly, she told them, was singing about the weather, ending with a version of Electric Light Orchestra's Mr Blue Sky.
She also remembered a songbook used throughout her time at junior school including The Beatles' When I'm Sixty-Four and Streets of London by Ralph McTell.
The star also let the children in on her most embarrassing on-stage moment – when she stood on the bottom of a baggy pair of trousers during a performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat as a Highfields pupil and fell over.
The singer has come a long way since those days. In September, this year she will be taking on the lead role in The Bodyguard at the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End.
She will take on the role made famous by Whitney Houston.
But ask the songstress who her singing heroes are and the answer lies a lot closer to home.
Her mother Deloris – with whom she sang in the choir at the chapel in Temple Street, now called All Nations Christian Centre – is one of them.
The other is her dad Eddie, a builder who used to belt out tunes as he went about earning his daily bread.
"I've got my mum to thank for the melodies and my dad to thank for the power," she said.
She also thanks her teachers at all her old schools for the guidance and support they offered to her as a fledgling singer. Beverley's first singing jobs were doing radio jingles before being offered a recording contract with a London studio.
She said it was refreshing to meet students at her former schools and be asked about things such as the launch of her career – something which she rarely speaks about now.
"It's just been the most edifying experience. It's interesting because their questions tell you how the children's minds are working," she said. "I thought asking me what was my most embarrassing moment was amazing. It's so lovely they are interested."
She went on to offer the school the opportunity to borrow some pictures of her when she was at school – in her own words 'wearing national health service big blue glasses, with two front teeth missing and pigtails – it was not a cool look'. The idea was to send the message to the pupils that they too could 'follow their dreams' because Beverley was once a normal schoolgirl too.
Woodfield Junior's deputy headteacher Heidi Perrett said: "It was so nice seeing the children respond to her and seeing in their faces that recognition when she was speaking, that that could be them one day."
