Undercover Boss Eleanor says she’s a typical, tenacious Scot

“See you Jimmy, I’ll show you!”

When Eleanor Kelly was a young girl growing up in Glasgow, her family faced tough times. Her dad lost his job and the family’s income stopped.

The Kellys could have accepted a life on benefits, but dad Jack packed his bags and moved to Corby in Northamptonshire, leaving the family in Glasgow.

He wasn’t the only one, of course. Over the years so many Scots have made the Corby move to find work, to this day it’s known as “Little Scotland”.

It was undoubtedly a hard time for the Kelly family.

“My dad lost his job and in those days, you could get a job in the steelworks and a £40 relocation fee. So that’s what he did,” Eleanor explains. “He stayed in a hostel until he was allocated a maisonette and then we followed him.”

She’s 55 now, but Eleanor remembers those days vividly.

“I can remember the train journey from Glasgow to Corby as if it was yesterday,” she says. “Me, my mum Winnie and sister Evelyn were on the train to join Dad, along with our dog and budgie.

“We were excited to be going to be reunited with Dad, but it wasn’t a nice time at all,” she remembers. “We’d left my brother in Glasgow as he was doing an apprenticeship.

“It was onwards and upwards, but it was really difficult. It’s one thing someone giving you a house but, because of the circumstances, we didn’t have anything.

“Honestly, we had what the relocation allowance bought two single beds and a Baby Belling.”

To this day, Eleanor remains proud of her dad for not accepting the hand he was dealt.

“To land on your bum, get up on your hind legs and get on with it is something to be proud of,” Eleanor says. “There might be other people who would just have lived on benefits, had six kids and smoked themselves silly because life had done them a bad turn.

“But you can’t think like that. You have to think, ‘I’m better than this, you can’t hold me down’.”

It’s safe to say Eleanor’s a chip off the old block. On leaving school and in her first job with Corby Development Corporation, the ambitious 16-year-old asked to sit her accountancy exams.

“I was told I’d only get married and have children, so they’d have wasted their money and I wouldn’t pass anyway,” Eleanor says, still indignant at the memory.

“My first thought was, ‘see you Jimmy, I’ll show you’. The sad thing was my dad had died two years before, but I knew he had my back.

“He knew he had to leave Glasgow and move to Corby. I knew I had to leave Corby and go to London.”

Leaving was a wrench. “Leaving my mum was hard, as she’d been widowed just two years. But I just wanted to challenge myself. I knew I could come to London and do my exams.

“Someone telling me I couldn’t well, it’s that stubborn, tenacious Scottish thing, isn’t it? Tell me I can’t and I’ll show you I can. It’s like a red rag to a bull!”

Eleanor slowly worked her way up the ladder in the private and public sector and has been chief executive of Southwark Council since last year.

Twelve years ago, daughter Jordan was born. She has complex special needs, but Eleanor glows when she speaks about her.

“When you have a child with special needs, you put down the burden of expectation and pick up the gift of hope and celebration of achievement.

“People would look at mine and my husband Joe’s achievements and expect our child to be totally brilliant. But instead she’s totally challenged,” she explains.

“I have no expectations of her. I can’t imagine having a child where I was expecting her to do well at school, to go to university, get a good degree, do this and that . . . instead I have sheer joy in what she manages to achieve, and what she’ll keep on achieving. She’s a gift and a joy.”

Eleanor admits that having Jordan changed her.

“I didn’t know if I was going to turn into an earth mother and start knitting my own yogurt or whether I’d think ‘get this baby off me’!

“Before, I was a workaholic. After Jordan, I’d get the 3am phone call that once would have galvanised me into action and instead I’d think, ‘I don’t give a damn’!”

She chose to take a career break.

“I was told I was taking a chance. I wasn’t, I was making a choice,” she says.

We’re well into our chat before Eleanor casually tells me that she donated a kidney to her niece, Jennifer, who lives in Banffshire.

“I took annual leave, donated my kidney and was back at work in four weeks,” she says cheerfully.

During this time she was job-sharing a chief executive’s role and looking after Jordan and still found time to donate a kidney.

It’s enough to make a girl feel inadequate.

“Donating a kidney wasn’t just to stop Jennifer from being on dialysis, she was desperately ill. It wasn’t a difficult decision, it was a life-saving decision. Evelyn, Jennifer’s mum, thinks I’m the best thing on legs!” she laughs.

Eleanor appeared last week on Channel 4’s Undercover Boss. She took on duties including working with the housing department and sweeping the streets.

Seeing how some of Southwark’s more challenged residents live brought back memories for her of her dad’s job loss, and she became emotional on camera.

“I’ve had a really good reaction across the board to that. So many people have said, ‘so that’s why you’re so down to earth’.

“My mum was worried about it, but I said what the family had achieved was something to be proud of.

“When we hit hard times, Mum went to work as a domestic in a hospital. She ended her career as matron in an old folks’ home. She’s my role model.”

She’s a high-flier, but Eleanor’s conversation returns to family again and again.

“We knew early on that Jordan had special needs, but we didn’t know how challenging it was going to be that’s why I took my career break.

“She’s autistic, dsypraxic and has ADHD. She’s clumsy, wild and off the wall! But she’s also adorable, funny and generous.

“We were told when she was four that she had no comprehension and would never know we were her parents.

“She knows. Put me in a crowd of 100 people and say to her you can only pick out one person she’d pick me. She knows,” she repeats proudly.

Like Eleanor, her daughter has clearly inherited plenty of her mum’s “tell me I can’t and I’ll show you I can” Scottish stubbornness.

No wonder her mum’s so proud.