I'm the Miss Blackpool beauty queen...my mum won it 40 years ago

Blackpool Gazette

Meet the mum and daughter who share a passion for beauty pageants.  Tabitha Bennett, 20, is the current Miss Blackpool...and mum, Vicky won the same title exactly 40 years ago.

Transcript

00:00Hello my name's Vicky Bennett and I was Miss Blackpool in 1984.

00:05Hi my name is Tabitha Bennett and I am the current Miss Blackpool of 2024.

00:10We're mother and daughter. I started at 18 which is

00:14is quite late so this was my third pageant

00:18so I won two out of the three. From my mum winning so many pageants and Miss

00:21Blackpool being the most prestigious one, the dream

00:25was to always win Miss Blackpool and especially to do it 40 years apart.

00:29I was 60 on Monday and when I was at school

00:33people started saying to me you know in the in the 80s beauty

00:36competitions were huge and people started saying to me oh you should enter

00:40this you should enter that and eventually I entered the local

00:43beauty competition Miss Ellesmere Port and Neston

00:46and I won that at 16 and then I went on to really great things and at 17

00:52I came second in Miss Great Britain and a few months later I won the Butlins

00:57Holiday Princess and won a brand new Ford Escort Ghia

01:01and then went on to win hundreds of competitions. Butlins Holiday Princess

01:05was the most prestigious competition of its day

01:08and a lot of the girls that won it went on to huge things it was always

01:12huge prizes and obviously Butlins was a huge holiday resort in those days

01:17people went to Butlins for their holidays

01:19and every week a Butlins Holiday Princess was chosen to go through to the

01:24national semi-final and then the national final and I won

01:28it in Brighton. I was 17 and I'd only just passed my driving test

01:32and I drove home in a brand new Ford Escort Ghia worth

01:35£5,776. It was a fantastic thing, 1983.

01:42I think paddents are more of a of a hobby now rather than a career

01:47and yeah I don't I don't think they're much of a career anymore but I think

01:51it's a really nice hobby and it's a really nice way to meet people.

01:54You see in the old days in the 80s it was a career

01:57and you actually signed a contract and it was a job

02:01that doesn't happen anymore but it's a fantastic career and it opens lots of

02:05doors there's lots of of girls have used it as

02:07a stepping stone for for really great things so I think

02:10it it opens doors and it creates opportunities

02:14and last year I came out of retirement and I won Miss Exquisite World which is

02:21a classic pageant for ladies of my age. I had a great time and I then from that

02:27went to Lady Star in Portugal where I came runner-up so it was a

02:33great achievement but I don't need to do any more now because

02:36Tabitha's doing them and that was what I wanted

02:39and now she's doing them we're going to next step

02:42she's going for Miss Lancashire and then hopefully if she wins Miss Lancashire

02:46she'll go through to the Miss England competition and Miss England goes to

02:50Miss World so that's the ultimate dream isn't it?

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