THE "Fastest Housewife in Bolton" came in to see me after a recent Looking Back item.

A competition at the old Co-operative store in Oxford Street, Bolton in January, 1969 involved women pedalling furiously on a roller cycle in an effort to win an automatic washing machine.

The picture on this page featured Theresa Powell of Highfield Road, Smithills posing in order to publicise the stunt.

Marian Roughley and her friend Margaret Ainslie, who are now neighbours in Forest Drive, Westhoughton, have both been in touch to tell me about their successes in the final.

It involved 20 "housewives" performing a 440-yard sprint in the Co-op window -- watched by hundreds of people looking through.

"It was very nerve-wracking -- I was the next to the last to ride," Marian tells me.

They were both keen cyclists, but they were in their late 30s at the time and up against younger competitors.

Marian, whose husband Jack is a former president of the Lancashire Road Club, remembers that she won by eight or nine seconds and was delighted to win the Hoover washer, worth something like £250.

Margaret tells me there were no toe clips on the pedals and she scraped her shin when her foot slipped off. "This caused me to lose some speed, but I picked up and eventually came second."

She won a dinner service.

Incidentally, the friends were told there was a chance to meet world cycling champion Beryl Burton, but it did not happen.