PHYLLIS Samuels looked like a million dollars as she sashayed down the grand staircase at Rockliffe Hall Hotel. As the winner of the Dream Image North East competition, Phyllis had enjoyed a complete make-over, from her fabulous hair-do to her manicured toes.

Apart from a stunning, highfashion evening dress and thousands of pounds worth of jewellery, Phyllis also showed off a flawless complexion and a mouthful of perfect teeth.

Back in 2011, Phyllis was shortlisted for a unique project. Eighteen businesses in the Tees Valley came together to offer their experience in transforming someone’s appearance.

The aim was to demonstrate that someone wanting a new look does not need to go to London.

Readers of The Northern Echo were among thousands of members of the public who voted for the most worthy person to have a make-over, potentially worth tens of thousands of pounds. Phyllis still remembers her disbelief when she told she had been chosen.

And anyone considering the journey Phyllis has made in her life might think that justice has finally been done.

It is something of an understatement when Phyllis says she didn’t have the best start in life. Because her mother had severe learning difficulties and was unable to look after a small baby, Phyllis spent the first years of her life in a series of churchrun orphanages staffed by nuns.

Shipped around from homes in Stockton to Houghton-le-Spring and then Birtley, life was hard. “I must have been five years old when I remember them giving me a brush and pan to clean the floor,” she says.

For years, Phyllis says she always crossed to the other side of the road if she saw a nun.

When she was eight she went to live with her grandparents, mother and brother. “I think it was my grandfather who got me out of the homes, but he died when I was 11 and from then on, I was my mother’s and brother’s full-time carer.”

Despite being one of six children, she was very much on her own, because all three of her brothers suffered from inherited severe learning disability, and her two sisters – who did not have learning disabilities – were adopted at a young age.

“I struggled and muddled through,” says Phyllis. “I had to do everything at home – cooking, shopping and cleaning.

“One day, one of the teachers brought me home and my mum was on the doorstep, confused. There was no food in the house and the electricity was off.”

The Northern Echo: The scars on her face after cancer surgery four years ago

But at the Albany Secondary School, in Norton, a teacher called Deana Addison took young Phyllis under her wing and – in an extraordinary act of generosity – ended up treating her as a member of her family.

Looking back, Phyllis thinks she “slipped through the net” of social services. Today, she probably would have been taken into care.

Phyllis credits Deana – who died a few years ago – as being a crucial influence for good in her life. “I only wish she could have been there on my big night,” says Phyllis.

As an adult, Phyllis went on to have a family of four. Her oldest daughter is Becky, 32, then Jonmichael, 27, Tom, 22, and – a late arrival – Beth, 12.

As well as continuing to be a carer, Phyllis has also worked at many different jobs, from a lollipop lady to escorting children with challenging behaviour to school.

She is particularly proud of Becky, who did well at school, excelled at university and is now a fully-qualified lawyer. And it was Becky who nominated her mother for the Dream Image make-over, saying she deserved to be pampered, for once, after bringing up four children as well as looking after her mother and brother.

“I thought that this could not only make a huge physical difference, it could make a huge emotional difference and allow her to overcome her self-esteem issues and hold her head up,” says Becky.

Part of the prize for winning Dream Image was to have the opportunity to have tens of thousands of pounds worth of cosmetic surgery.

But because of a very bad experience with general anaesthetic, Phyllis decided to decline the recommended tummy tuck, neck lift and breast reduction and concentrate on sorting out some disfiguring facial scars caused by cancer surgery and do something about her “terrible”

teeth.

Apart from Phyllis’s difficult circumstances, she also suffered two bouts of facial cancer. The first, when she was a teenager, left ugly scars near her mouth. The second lot of cancer four years ago left her with scars near her nose.

Using only local anaesthetic, Phyllis underwent cosmetic surgery on her face, at the hands of Yarm consultant plastic surgeon Paul Baguley, as well as laser treatment to remove unsightly veins.

The Northern Echo: HAPPY FAMILY: Phyllis with her children Tom, Becky, Beth and Johnmichael

In addition to her cosmetic surgery, Phyllis overcame her fear of dentists to spend an incredible 29 hours in the chair at the surgery of Mike Heads, a specialist in cosmetic dentistry at the Cleveland Cosmetic and Dental Implant Clinic in Stockton.

“Mike just talked to me and cracked jokes to put me at my ease while he worked,” says Phyllis, who had four new dental implants, new veneers on her front teeth, a whole host of crowns and all her old, mercury- based black fillings taken out and replaced with white fillings.

“I really love my teeth,” says Phyllis, flashing a perfect smile. More than anything I want to thank everyone in the Dream Image team, particularly Linda Heads, Yvonne Wallace, Mike Heads and Paul Baguley.”