Mary Perkins running PR. She has admitted donning disguises and visiting Specsavers stores, posing as a customer. Perkins was made an honorary fellow of Cardiff University in 2005. The same year she received the "Rotary International Community and Vocational Service Award" for her services to charity and in 2006 won the inaugural Spirit of everywoman Award. Perkins was the first female optician in the UK to receive the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2007. The accolade was also in recognition of her other charitable work, including the Guernsey annual "Specsavers Liberation Tea Dance for
Dame Mary Cook Dame Mary Cook Dame Mary Cook (née Turner; – 24 September 1950) was the wife of Australian Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Cook. Mary Turner was 22 years old and had been a schoolteacher for eight years when she married Joseph Cook in 1885. Beginning as a pupil teacher at Chesterton Girls' School, by 1885 she was an assistant mistress. Like Cook, she came from a Staffordshire mining family. She appears to have had a role in helping both her brothers and her husband to overcome their lack of education. At their Lithgow home, Cook studied in the evenings, moving from