A former Preston Poly journalism student who went on to work for local newspapers such as the Bury Times is searching for ex-classmates for a reunion to mark 20 years since the end of their course.

Heather Stephen was among the 30 students who studied at the Preston university - now the University of Central Lancashire - on the one-year diploma in newspaper journalism in 1986/7.

She has managed to contact around half of her former classmates, and is now hoping to track down more with the help of holdthefrontpage.

She said: "I thought it would be nice to get everyone together and see what everyone is doing - I haven't seen some of them since we left the course.

"I have a lot of happy memories of the course, we had a lot of fun and were quite close at the time."

After leaving the course Heather worked for the Bury Times group, Blackpool Evening Gazette, and Leicester Mercury before moving into magazines and then becoming a full-time mum.

Among those who will be attending will be Nick Heartland, who now works as a freelance journalist in Wales, and former lecturer Alan McKenzie and his wife, Barbara, who taught shorthand.

Others Heather is still keen to make contact with include Eleanor Mason, Simon Parker and Pete Doherty.

The reunion will be held in Preston - at a venue to be decided - on October 27.

Students from the class of 1986/7 who would like to attend should e-mail heather.stephen@gmail.com or call 07809 480363.