RaW

The stories showed a great deal of imagination and included a huge range of characters but aliens, fairies, dragons and cats were popular choices.

The final winner was Gran’s Great by Geraldine Durrant.

Charlie Higson (author of the Young Bond series and co-creator of The Fast Show), was our judge and chose Geraldine’s story because ‘it’s funny and manages to pack a lot of story into a very short space, which is trickier than it looks. I also liked it because the writer completely ignored the brief - which is sometimes a very good thing to do.’

Geraldine’s prize is to have her story illustrated by a top illustrator and we’ll be filming the process for our TV news.

Gran’s Great by Geraldine Durrant

‘She bakes and knits, and says things like "take your coat off indoors or you won’t feel the benefit": you’d never guess she’d been a pirate when she was younger.

Back then she had red hair and striped stockings and drank sherry: pirates mostly drink rum, but Gran says sherry is more ladylike.

Pirating isn’t the life for everyone, but Gran says if you don’t mind sleeping in a hammock, and being called Scary Mary or Mad Moll, then it’s a career more girls should think about.

Long hours of course, but you get to travel - and if you like eating fish and bird-watching it’s ideal, really.

Gran doesn’t do pirating any more: too much red tape.

“Try sending a cabin boy up the rigging in a force nine these days, and they’ll have Health and Safety on you before you can say doubloon,” she says.

But she still wears her old pirate hat round the house, and carves the roast with her cutlass: she says it reminds her of “the good times”.

And she keeps a crocodile under her bed.

He’s pretty harmless really, although if he’s in a bad mood she has to run from the bedroom door and leap on to her mattress so he doesn’t nip her ankles.

But Gran’s pretty spry for her age and I think the exercise does her good.

I know she misses her old shipmates - Flint-Hearted Jack, Fingers O’Malley and Cut Throat Malone: and, as she says herself, the crocodile’s company.

So sometimes she and the crocodile have some hot milk, then they take out their teeth, snuggle down back-to-back under the eiderdown, and snore quietly as they dream about the bad old days aboard The Black Barnacle.’

We’ll also be showcasing some of the other entries on our site in the near future.