ABSTRACT
During the late 1990s, Maureen Rees, a woman from Cardiff in Wales, became a national superstar in the United Kingdom after appearing on a BBC series, Driving School. This series followed the experiences of driving instructors by recording some of their lessons and tracking selected learners through to their tests. Maureen was a student who presented her instructor with a major challenge: She appeared incapable of mastering the basic skills of driving, but was desperate to pass her test. Gritty determination paid off and, on her eighth attempt, she finally passed the test in a car with an automatic gearbox. What gripped the series’ producers, and eventually the watching millions, were Maureen’s practice sessions, filmed in her own car with her husband Dave in the passenger seat, where she was seen weaving dangerously in and out of busy traffic lanes-horns blaring from all sides-and mounting the pavement in an attempt to reverse around a corner. By the end of 1997, Maureen had been featured in most national newspapers and on other television shows, and had become a celebrity as well known, for a limited period, as leading politicians and artistic and sporting achievers.
