Her Galway-born father joined the British Army at 17 to fight in World War II, then moved to Coventry, met her mother and worked at a car-plant.
She once told Express.co.uk: “Dad was part of a big working class male voice choir and he and mum both loved ballroom dancing so he’d either do a gig or they’d dance and all come back to ours. We’d hear people singing, laughing and dancing….”
Unfortunately, when her parents were involved in a life-changing car accident, their marriage fell apart.
From then on, eight-year-old Hazel and a 10-year-old Neil went to live with their grandmother.
Hazel joked during the interview that she had only started singing to torment Neil, musing: “He had asthma and couldn’t stop wheezing. I said, ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll sing’ and I did. He said, ‘Haze, I can’t help it!’”
