Cleaned up as acid-tongued star

KIM Woodburn’s rise to fame came from an incredibly difficult start in life, but the cleaning job she took on at 16 ended up being her road to fame and fortune.

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Born Patricia Mary McKenzie in Eastney, Hampshire, she said that she was physically abused by her parents throughout her childhood, and sexually abused by her father.

To escape the torment she left home at 16 and moved to Liverpool where she worked as a live-in cleaner for a laundrette-owning family, earning £2.10 a week.

In 1966, aged 23, she gave birth to a premature stillborn son and buried him in a park. This revelation in her 2006 autobiography “Unbeaten” led to a police inquiry but no action was taken.