• 2 days ago
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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