1 FORCE of nature Mary Lee, who died last week aged 100, once beat Dame Vera Lynn to the title of UK’s most popular singer. Born Mary Ann McDevitt in a Kinning Park tenement in 1921, the daughter of a Glasgow lorry driver first started singing in church choirs and doing impressions for friends and family.

Glasgow Times: Mary and Jack

2 At the age of 13, she won a talent competition and was offered the chance to join Roy Fox’s famous dance band, where she was headlined ‘Little Mary Lee’. A recording career followed, and in 1937 Melody Maker readers voted her Best Girl Singer, with Vera Lynn in second place.

Glasgow Times: Mary Lee and her husband Jack Milroy

3 With her husband Jack Milroy, she became a huge star of Scottish variety theatre, playing to packed houses at the likes of the Pavilion in Glasgow and the Gaiety in Ayr. She once said: “I still loved singing, but I knew I would always make a good living from comedy. I spent most of the 1940s perfecting the art and also writing scripts.”

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4 After a break to raise her family, and a period of separation from Jack, Mary made her comeback, aged 50, appearing in English theatres and clubs. The couple got back together and Mary went on to appear in an episode of Rab C Nesbitt in 1991 and front her own Sony Award-winning show on Radio Clyde. After Jack died in 2001, Mary Lee wrote of their time together in Forever Francie: My Life with Jack Milroy, published in 2005.

5 In a tribute to the star following her death, Glasgow’s King’s Theatre, where Mary trod the boards on many occasions, said: “We are saddened to hear of our pal Mary Lee Milroy’s passing. A true variety starlet and a great friend to the King’s who’ll forever be with us in spirit.”