LITTLE Whitney Hamer bit into her sweet at the cinema and nearly missed her first "date" with the -- Tooth Fairy.

The desperate five-year-old burst into tears when her first baby milk tooth popped out and disappeared into the pieces of popcorn discarded on the cinema floor.

But the tears turned to joy after the film when kindhearted cinema staff embarked on a full-scale torchlight search of the floor -- and discovered Whitney's missing tooth.

The drama began when Whitney was watching the blockbuster film, Dinosaur, with her mother, father and grandmother.

Midway through the film, her tooth fall out and vanished onto the floor of the pitch black UCG Cinema at Waters Meeting Road, Bolton.

Her desperate dad, Curtis, of Alder Street, Great Lever, said: "I couldn't concentrate on the film from that point on. I tried finding the tooth but there was popcorn all over the floor.

"Whitney was so upset that she spent the rest of the film under the seats trying to find it.

"It was so important to all of us. It was her first milk tooth and Whitney had been looking forward to the tooth fairy coming for the past three weeks.

"She was crying loudly and was very upset."

Cinema staff, including security guards used hi-tech walkie talkies and torches in a fingertip search of the floor after the film had finished.

"Really, it was quite hilarious," Curtis said. "The cinema was packed and everyone in the cinema must have wondered what was going on.

"But the staff seemed to realise how important this was to us. If she had lost the tooth we would all have been devastated."

Whitney went home with the offending tooth which she popped into a match box and put under her pillow for the Tooth Fairy.

"She got £10," Curtis said. "I think it made up for all the upset she had gone through.

"But we are full of praise for the cinema staff."

Michael Shaw, deputy manager of the cinema, said it was probably the strangest request that they had ever had.

Mr Shaw said: "We were only too happy to help. A first tooth is a very important occasion and people often lose things and ask us to help at the end of the film -- although this is probably the strangest.

"It makes me happy that Whitney has been made happy. At the end of the day, that's what this cinema is all about."