Earlier this month the title announced that a preliminary outing of its Hyndburn Honey initiative had been so successful that it was transforming the concept into a regular competition slot, whereby ‘girls of the week’ would appear in the paper.

According to the Observer’s editor Mervyn Kay this is now set to continue for “as long as entries come in” with the girls then competing against one another via an online reader’s poll (maybe ‘a vote’ would be a more appropriate expression under the circumstances - Ed) to see which has stolen the most Hyndburn hearts.

The winner will receive a cash prize of £100 and a portfolio of pictures from Accrington Observer lens man Tony Cross.

However, despite the feature’s apparent success (Kay told How-Do there is currently a waiting list of ten girls set to appear), the competition has already taken a degree of flak online, with some commentators lamenting the paper’s “gross disservice to the women of Accrington.”

Honey or slapper? Romi in trouble

It concluded: “Yet another generation of Lancashire lasses having their aspirations skewed by stereotypes. And all to make profits for the Guardian Media Group.”

Kay, however, shrugged off any suggestion of sexism or exploitation, claiming that he had "not received a single complaint” and saw nothing wrong with bringing the ‘Honeys’ idea “down to a local level.”

He added: “The whole thing started after we ran a piece on a local girl that had appeared in Playboy. We asked if any of our readers knew anyone as glamorous and the whole thing took off from there. To be honest we were surprised by the response.”

Kay concluded that the team were simply responding to their readership and may be tempted to do so once again with a new idea… The Hyndburn Hunks.

We’ll have to wait and see what the bloggers make of that one.

(In an interesting side-story it appeared as if, at the time of writing, one of the Honey’s was on the front page for slightly less glamorous reasons. Romi Jane Young is clearly being a little over zealous in her quest to be a hit with the locals.)

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Comments (4)

2  By Tameside Eye , on 01-04-2008 13:25 Urgh I can imagine a Miss. Tameside... not a pretty sight. You may say it is the reason I turned out to be gay.    I wonder though if there would of been as many objections if it was pictures of men being published? I doubt there would of been.    It is not as if that some bloke held his smack head wife by the neck and forced her to enter the competition is it? For the feminists to say it is derogatory towards women is an insult to those women who made their own mind up on entering the competion in the first place. Report

3  By Tameside Eye , on 01-04-2008 13:27 Where as in Tameside they are looking for Tameside's sexiest animal:    http://www.tamesideadvertiser.co.uk/news/s/1042717_is_your_pet_the_cutest_of_them_all    Figures... Report