A nanny who has dined with the Royal Family, been serenaded by Pavarotti and has been proposed to by a Saudi Prince has spoken of her amazing journey from Clayton-le-Moors to international notoriety.

Marleanne Dolphin, better known the world over as ‘Nanny Anny’, left a terraced house in Clayton in 1959 with little more than five shillings in her pocket to find fortune in London.

Anny, as she became known, began working as a nanny in Mayfair in the sixties and soon settled into a jet setters life style with some of London’s high flying families.

The 74-year-old, who now lives in Littlehampton, West Sussex has travelled to Austria, Italy, South Africa, the Caribbean and Saudi Arabia to name but a few caring for the children.

She said that she now wanted to encourage youngsters in Clayton-le-Moors to take her lead and ‘experience the world’.

Anny said: “I am working with young people down here and I want to raise enthusiasm in the next generation, you can move on in life nothing should stop you, I come from nothing and I saw the world.

“My first job was when I was 19, I got £5 a week in Mayfair. I stayed there for seven years before I went on holiday to Italy and met a lovely family who were looking for a nanny.

“Whilst I was there I met Pavarotti, who lived next to the family in Bologna. One night I remember so vividly, he serenaded us and told me that I was the best nanny in the world!

“Many years later when he toured the UK I got a special invite from him, it was lovely.”

Anny added: “After Italy I went from place to place. In Saudi Arabia I was proposed to by a prince and when I was in the Caribbean with a family from Knightsbridge, we shared the afternoon with Princess Margaret, who came over because we had a bigger pool!”