She's done it! Barbara Gray is Supershare champion, the best of 21,000 entries, winner of the top £2,000 prize... "and I think I must be dreaming," she said on being told of her victory.

Three times she'd been at second place and now three times she's led the field, only she was ahead last night when it really counted.

Barbara, 46, of Larkspur, Whitwell-on-the-Hill was today toasting her victory in Champagne from the bottle she had bought days ago. "I believed I would open it to drown my sorrows rather then celebrate a title win."

How will she spend her £2,000? "I haven't decided but I'm bound to use some of it to play the real stockmarket," she said. The money will be presented to her at a special ceremony at the Evening Press on Friday by Supershare sponsors, Walsh Lucas & Company, the independent financial advisers of Micklegate, York.

Throughout yesterday, her colleagues at the Great North Eastern Railway, York, where she is a compliant project manager, were rooting for her.

"It's all the more thrilling because I never win anything and the way the market surged upwards in the afternoon I was convinced I would be wiped out of the Supershare Top Ten."

But her portfolio consisting of £10,000 fantasy investments grew to an unbeatable £12,324.70 with the winning combination of Iceland (£5,000), British Gas £500, Dixons (£4,000) and Dewhirst (£500).

The victory finally ends the week-long see-sawing tussle for first and second place between her and Graham Winship, 39, of Fulford Road, Fulford. Graham was first last Thursday, with Barbara second.

Then he was ousted on Friday into second place by Barbara who enjoyed a repeat win for the £50 daily prize on Tuesday, with Graham back in second. But he came back to claim the top slot just as the last entries were being submitted (and not the other way round as a technical error led some early edition readers of yesterday's Evening Press to believe). The distance between their portfolio values was a nailbiting £2.04p.

Now, on the final reckoning it is her at number one, and Graham collects the £1,000 Framlington fund prize as overall runner-up.

Graham provides technical computer support for the design unit at York College of Further and Higher Education. His wife, Dianne is a lecturer there. He said: "It's been a wonderful experience and I'm so pleased that Barbara won. Dianne and I feel like we know her.

"I'll probably use part of my winnings to link into the Internet."

Wooden spoon winner was pensioner Ethel Gears, of Pulleyn Drive, York, who somehow managed to shrink her fantasy £10,000 portfolio by more than £1,500 to a paltry £8,495.66. "It's easy when you don't know how, although in the last Supershare I was one of the daily £50 winners. Ah well, someone's got to be last and it may as well be me." Mrs Gears will collect a mystery prize at tomorrow's awards ceremony.

* Yesterday, judgement day, Barrie Bluck of stockbrokers Redmayne Bentley reported the stock exchange index up a massive 85.4 to 6017, with the most startling Supershare leaps taken by Abbey National, up 40 pence followed by Railtrack, up 23 pence and GA and British Telecom up 18p apiece.

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