MAKING front page news today were a beauty queen, a £200 wedding gown and a team of footballers.

The venue was St Mary’s RC Church, Burnley and the event was the wedding of beauty queen Maureen Bradley, to former Burnley player and Leeds centre forward Alan Shackleton.

The wedding gown, a Norman Hartnell creation, stopped the traffic twice in the town centre, once for the bride’s arrival and again as the couple left church as a new Mr and Mrs.

For crowds of housewives surged across the road to catch a glimpse.

Two police inspectors and six constables tried to control a crowd of more than 500 armed with shopping baskets and the road was blocked for a time. For small boys, the wedding was an autograph hunter’s paradise, Burnley players Jimmy Adamson, Jimmy McIlroy and Tommy Cummings, alongside former Claret Doug Winton, then with Aston Villa, ex-Burnley J Walton and Alan’s Leeds clubmates Eric Kerfoot and Royston Wood, found themselves besieged after they had formed a guard of honour with claret and blue corner flags.

The gown that so interested the ladies was of white French satin brocade, cut on classical lines, Miss Bradley also wore an organza head dress and carried pink orchids and lily of the valley.

The bride was the daughter of Mr and Mrs J G Bradley, of Fairholme Road, Towneley and the groom’s parents lived in Burnley Road, Padiham.

In other news, police were hunting a runaway gunman, armed with a loaded rifle.

The man threatened an officer called to a house because of a quarrel.

It was also announced that Cephos Ltd, the Blackburn headache remedy concern had been taken over by Beecham Pharmaceuticals.

The announcement was made by joint managing director Thomas Livesey, who said the tablets and powders would now be made in St Helen’s and the Blackburn factory would be sold, affecting 40 workers.