Shipley has got a new movie star in its midst – a butternut squash called Ben.

Film-maker and mother-of-one Julie Wilkinson is pinning her hopes on the unlikely celebrity, hoping he will help win her a £5,000 prize in a competition.

The 31-year-old from Baildon has entered The Vegetivity – her own version of the Christmas Story – into The Nativity Factor, a competition by ITN to find a short film that retells that most famous of stories in a creative way.

Viewers were encouraged to vote on line for the three-minute epic to put The Vegetivity in the short-list pot.

Mrs Wilkinson, who is a storyteller with The Zephaniah Trust at Shipley Baptist Church, says the prize money would be used to help the trust keep up its work through arts and music, taking Christianity into schools, youth groups and community centres.

The soundtrack for The Vegitivity is a song called Angel by one of Mrs Wilkinson’s colleagues John Froud.

Ben’s first foray into the film world was a role as himself in Ben’s Day Out. Mrs Wilkinson came up with the idea to persuade her daughter Kayleigh, now six, to eat more vegetables.

Mrs Wilkinson said: “She was intrigued by Ben, she’d never seen anyone quite like him before so I let her cuddle him like a baby when we were in the supermarket. When we got him home we put googly eyes on him and drew a smile.

“We took him to the park and made a film of him then we took him home, I cooked him and she ate him which is a bit scary but he helped make the idea of eating veg a lot friendlier to her!” said Mrs Wilkinson.

After that, Ben went on to appear in a second film called Ben The Butternut Shepherd telling the parable of The Good Shepherd, then came the film of the Christmas story that was turned into DVDs last year and sold for £5 each making £200 for the Trust – in it a sprout puts in a guest appearance as baby Jesus.

“I’ve had to edit it down for this contest but it’s still action packed and hopeful it will be a winner!” she added. As for Ben’s next part, he’s destined to be a romantic hero says Mrs Wilkinson who did not ant to give much away but joked: “He’s going to have to slim down a bit.”

e-mail: kathie.griffiths @telegraphandargus.co.uk