ARMIES of teenage girls have been spotted roaming the streets of Stroud over the past few weeks clutching bundles of the Stroud News & Journal.

The reason? Our fantastic competition offering the chance to personally meet the McFly boys- Britain's hottest pop sensations.

Jessica Martin, Katie Davis, Lauren McDonnell and Carly Noble all aged 16, from Stroud's Archway School lost count of the number of newspapers they bought in just one week to be in with a chance of winning the competition.

"I bought at least 40 copies," said Jessica, " I think we all bought around that amount. One of the assistants in one shop looked at us in a very strange way when we scooped up a great bundle of SNJ's."

It was no surprise then that two of the winners pulled out of the hat on Friday were Lauren and Jessica.

And there were further smiles all round when they announced they would be taking friends Katie and Carly along to the McFly concert at Cardiff International Arena last night.

"We have all been trying to meet the band for so long," said Lauren on Monday as the girls made their preparations for the trip across the bridge to Wales.

"We can't believe we won. It just won't sink in. We think the SNJ is the best paper and we will love it forever for making this happen for us."

Amy Bridges from Sir William Romney's School, Tetbury won the third pair of tickets.

"I can't believe it, this is so fantastic," she said. Amy took along her friend Crystal Seares, also a pupil at Sir William Romney.

The girls were the special guests of McFly at last night's concert and were due to be whisked backstage to meet the boys in the band. They have promised to tell us all about their dream night out in next week's SNJ.