ACTORS Brenda Harrison and Stuart Butt are the best: and they have both won awards to prove it!

Grandmother Brenda collected the best actress award while Stuart won best actor at a festival of plays,

Brenda (55) of Malvern Avenue, Walmersley, scooped the award for her role in She Thought It Was Wind, a drama set in 1958. Stuart (53), of Moss Shaw Way, Radcliffe, impressed as a grieving father, Mr Ryan, in the drama Fire.

The festival was put on by the Bury-based Carol Godby Theatre Workshop for adult members at Middleton Civic Hall.

Mother-of-two Brenda quit her job as a dinner lady to concentrate on acting last June when she joined the workshop.

Brenda said she was delighted to win the award but was hoping for bigger and better things. She said: "Next week I am in Coronation Street, and I would love to have a proper part on that soap or do more stage work."

Stuart, too, has ambitions and appeared in a commercial for a large supermarket chain shown on TV over Christmas. "I hope one day to be fortunate enough to do acting full time," he said.