One of the original Calendar Girls will be at Bradford Cathedral next week for a showing of the hit movie which raised millions for charity.

Tricia Stewart, Miss October, was played by Dame Helen Mirren in the film which was based on the inspirational true story of a group of women from Rylstone Women’s Institute, near Skipton, who decided to raise money for their local hospital by posing nude for a calendar.

They hoped to raise a few hundred pounds. To date that figure is more than £3m. Proceeds from the film show in the Cathedral on Friday, September 6, will go to Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research.

“The idea for the calendar was down to Tricia who will talk about this and the making of the film after the showing,” said Sandra Howard, PA to the Dean of the Cathedral, the Very Rev Jerry Lepine.

“I met Tricia at an International Women’s Day in the Great Victoria Hotel a couple of years ago. That gave me the idea of writing to ask her to come to the cathedral.

“When she replied she apologised for being in a rush because she said she was just off to Seattle. I thought she meant Settle,” Sandra added.

Calendar Girls is the first of a new season of Friday night films at the cathedral, which can seat up to 300 for the screenings.

Other films coming up are the 1923 classic Hunchback of Notre Dame, on October 11, and the 1970 version of The Railway Children, which was made on and around the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway.

This film will be shown on November 15. Afterwards Keighley’s former Labour MP Ann Cryer will talk about the making of the film which her late husband the Labour MP and railway enthusiast Bob Cryer appeared in and did much to assist.

Doors open for pre-Calendar Girls refreshments at 6.30pm. The film starts at 7pm. Tickets cost £5 from the cathedral office and on the door.