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
Mary Perkins, On Stage Mary Perkins, On Stage Mary Perkins, On Stage (originally titled simply On Stage) is an American newspaper comic strip by Leonard Starr for the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate. It ran from February 1957 to September 9, 1979, with the switch to the longer title in 1961. Some papers carried the strip under the shortened title Mary Perkins. Starr's scripts mixed soap opera, adventure and broad humor, while the art was characterized by a studied line and often innovative storytelling. The strip offered a Broadway backstage drama as it followed the career of actress Mary Perkins in New York, Hollywood