Retro: Miss Derry final at Squires - from the June 1995 Derry Journal archive

Michelle Doherty, with comperes Shaun Doherty and Pamela Ballantine, after being crowned Miss Derry 1995 at the final of the competition in Squires.

Tuesday’s Miss Derry extravaganza will be jointly compered by one of TV’s best-known faces, Pamela Ballantine, of UTV, and one of the North West’s top radio personalities, Shaun Doherty, of Highland Radio.

Shaun has compered the show for the past few years and was joined on the catwalk last year with BBC personality and former Eurovision Song Contest finalist, Frances Campbell, now expecting her third child.

Shaun is looking forward to co-hosting the show with Pamela, who presented the ‘Miss Northern Ireland’ contest held in Belfast City Hall earlier this year.

Shorefront fence like Belsen

The finalists of the 1995 Miss Derry competition pictured at the final in Squires Nightclub.

Buncrana Councillor Nicholas Crossan has compared the high wire fence around the town’s shorefront pitch and putt course, to the Belsen concentration camp.

Colr. Crossan made the comparison at the Council’s monthly meeting when he reluctantly agreed to allow the pitch and putt course to be leased over the summer months, on the condition that money is allocated from next year’s Council estimates to have the fence taken down.

Last October, Colr. Crossan tabled a motion at the Council calling for the fence to be removed so the shorefront could be ‘given back.’

Eddie’s dam gets under way

An anxious moment as supporters await the result of the 1995 Miss Derry final in Squires Nightclub.

When Environment Minister Brendan Howlin visited Buncrana on Tuesday to cut the first sod for the new £27 million Pollan Dam scheme, there was regret at the absence, in person, if not in spirit, of the late Colr. Eddie Fullerton, the man given credit for first proposing the dam as a solution to Buncrana’s water supply problems.

However, the Pollan Dam will be a lasting reminder to the Sinn Féin councillor who was gunned down by the UFF at his Buncrana home in May 1991, because when it is completed, it will be known as the ‘Fullerton Dam’, in Eddie’s honour.