Coronation Street star Betty Driver has served up hotpots in the Rovers Return for over 40 years.          But the Manchester-raised hotpot queen, who plays barmaid Betty Williams, has revealed she’s not so hot in her real life kitchen.
Asked by Desert Island Discs presenter Kirsty Young if she knows how to make a hotpot, Betty confessed: “No, I’m dreadful. I’m a terrible cook.          “I’ve got seven men friends and they all know I’m rubbish in the kitchen. I really am rubbish,” she told the BBC Radio 4 programme.
As the latest castaway to appear on the long-running series, Betty, 90, disclosed how she might have been a Hollywood star, if it was not for her domineering mother Nell.          She said a career in tinseltown could have been a possibility, as well as appearances on Broadway. “But, of course, mummy didn’t want to know about that - all she wanted me to do was variety.”      
Former singing star Betty first went on stage as a child and has been in showbusiness for the last 80 years.
“I just love working and I will never retire, ever. They’ll have to shoot me to get rid of me,” she said during the programme recorded in Manchester.
She talked about her unhappy childhood and how she was hit by her mother, who forced her to perform and never showed her any love.
“We had no happiness when we were little, me and my sister Freda. We went to a different school each week, which was horrendous.”
Eventually, in her mid-twenties, Betty had a nervous breakdown. “I just couldn’t cope anymore. I just passed out on the stage while I was singing - I got agoraphobia - 18 months and I wouldn’t go through the door. I think a lot of it was being bullied."
Awarded the MBE in 2000, Betty was in her thirties when her mother died and said that, even today, she can never forgive her. “No, I was the meal ticket for the entire family - they all had a nice little share of my money.”
Betty paid tribute to her late younger sister Freda, who was her greatest supporter. “She was like a little rock. We lived together nearly all our lives.”
She also spoke about her unhappy marriage to singer and musician Wally Peterson, who left her penniless. “I loved him but he loved other girls more than me.
“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.”
After a career on stage, radio, TV and as a leading lady in big screen films, Betty retired in the 1960s to run a pub in Derbyshire with Freda.
She later agreed to appear as namesake Betty in six episodes of Coronation Street and thought she would soon be back behind her real bar. “Forty one years later, I’m still churning out hotpot. It’s amazing.”
Betty’s fan mail includes letters from children who want her to be their grandmother. “I just love people and I love the cast. I’ve made tremendous friends - and I’m the happiest person in the world.”
The veteran star’s choice of eight discs included her own recording of I’ll Take Romance. Even though she hates the sound of her own singing voice, friends asked her to choose it.
She said: “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 was 18 and I’m 90 now - I’ve hidden these records...right at the back of the wardrobe so nobody would find them at all.”
She also picked Night and Day by jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald and explained: “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.”
Another selection was the St Louis Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Overture to Swan Lake. “I’m a romantic person,” she told the programme. “You wouldn’t think to look at me, big and fat and old, would you? But I am very romantic.”
Betty said the book she would take to the desert island was Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. While her choice of luxury was sweeter-smelling than hotpot - perfume.
Betty’s eight music choices:
Betty Driver: I’ll Take Romance.       Stephen Hough: Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1.       Ella Fitzgerald: Night and Day.       Sir Harry Mortimer and the GUS Brass Band: Thunder and Lightning.       Winifred Atwell: Black and White Rag.       St Louis Symphony Orchestra: Tchaikovsky Overture to Swan Lake.       Hoagy Carmichael: Skylark.       Steven Isserlis: Adagio from Cello Sonata No 2 by Brahms