SUSAN Gunn is a talented artist who has struggled to be taken seriously because she is a footballer's wife.

The 41-year-old is the wife of former Norwich City and Scotland goalkeeper Bryan Gunn, and she has just beaten 300 European artists to scoop the inaugural Sovereign Art prize.

She deserves our congratulations on several counts. As Westhoughton girl Susan Winward, she was a very successful beauty queen who turned her talents to business to run a busy weddingwear company.

She trained at Westhoughton High School and Bolton College of Art and, after meeting and marrying Bryan, she moved south with her husband's career.

Tragedy struck when their first child, Francesca Ruth, died of leukaemia aged just two and a half. The couple went on to have two more children, but they used their personal sadness to positive effect to launch the Bryan Gunn Laukaemia Appeal which has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for research and gained the couple a raft of awards.

Susan's life may have looked charmed in her youth, but it is the way that we cope with what life throws at us that really shapes us as people. And she has already achieved so much with hers