CHAMPAGNE corks popped for a pensioner who won a "thank-you" bottle of bubbly for her charity work - just in time to celebrate her 80th birthday.

Margaret Haywood, of Kent Close, is the first winner of a scheme to say "cheers" to Wyre Forest folk raising funds for the Kemp Hospice Appeal.

Each week a fund-raiser will receive a bottle of champagne under the joint venture between Sainsbury's Kiddermin-ster and the Shuttle Times & News.

And Kidderminster-born Mrs Haywood, who was 80 earlier this month, enjoyed the prize at a birthday party on Saturday.

She started charity work after the death of her youngest son with cancer in 1993. She said: "When Andrew died, a group of us started raising money for charity. We paid to get weighed and if we didn't lose weight, we got fined - that was how we raised money."

The group raised £13,000 for Kemp before Mrs Haywood switched to holding coffee mornings as a main project to raise money for Kemp.

She said: "Kemp was so wonderful to Andrew and so supportive to me. There's so much joy in that place - no doom and gloom. There's so much comfort in that place.

"I don't think that anything we could do to help them can repay for the love and support they gave to Andrew."

She added: "What I do is a heart-felt thank you to Kemp, my labour of love for them."