Bertha Mason has more reasons than most to look forward to the British film premiere of Fairy Tale - A True Story in Bradford on Sunday.

For the 94-year-old, from Wrose, used to work with Elsie Wright, one of the cousins behind the famous Cottingley fairy photographs.

Sadly Elsie died in 1988, but Bertha will be among the guests at the People's Premiere for the official launch of the film which features Harvey Keitel and Peter O'Toole.

"Elsie and I worked at burling and mending in Saltaire in the early 1920s, at Mrs Parker's house above an undertaker's shop," said Bertha.

It was during the height of the publicity surrounding the photographs .

"Elsie told us how she had seen and photographed the fairies. She said the fairies were lovely and brought in to show us the camera that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had given her," she added.

"She was so convincing and insistent that the fairies were real and we never had any reason to doubt her word. She never once admitted it was a hoax and we believed her.

"She brought in four photographs of the fairies and I asked if my sister could borrow them to show her teacher. But my sister dropped one and broke the glass, although Elsie didn't mind.

"She laughed about all the people talking about her. She was tickled pink by it all. But all the fuss and fame never went to her head. Her mother and father, however, were tired of the hullabaloo."

Bertha has followed the fairy saga throughout her life and has a collection of press cuttings.

She added: "Elsie was a lovely character and had a lovely sense of humour. She was very friendly and not the least bit dreamy. The most noticeable thing about her was her hair, she had so much of it. Elsie met and married her husband, a soldier, in America and then they went to live in India. But I can remember her coming back to Bradford to have her baby at a nursing home, which is now Shipley Hospital."

Despite tome of the photos being fakes, Bertha says she'd still like to believe fairies exist.

She said. "Although I felt a bit disappointed when I found out it was a hoax, I feel very proud to have known Elsie."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.