It took proof-reader Jean Hannant just three hours to write the winning play for the Bermuda Musical & Dramatic Society?s (BMDS) fourth annual Famous for Fifteen Minutes competition.

The winning entry, ?Old Sailors Never Die?, was announced on Saturday evening at a gala performance of Famous for Fifteen Minutes at the Daylesford Theatre.

Mrs. Hannant was so energised by the act of writing ?Old Sailors Never Die? that she wrote another one after finishing the first, ?Happy Ending? which was also chosen to be performed in Famous for Fifteen Minutes.

?I was shaking so badly when I accepted my award that producer Kelvin Hastings-Smith had to hold my hand,? said Mrs. Hannant.

?It was a total surprise. I thought ?Happy Ending? was going to win.?

Unfortunately, the Golden Inkwell award she received was so heavy that Mrs. Hannant, 78, had to hand it back to Mr. Hastings-Smith as soon as she?d received it.

?Old Sailors Never Die? was partly inspired by a television documentary, and partly inspired by the life of her father, who was a Navy man.

?The documentary was on the BBC; it was about an army man,? said Mrs. Hannant. ?When a man has been in the service for years he gets really spoiled. Everything is done for him: laundry, dry cleaning.

?The man featured in the documentary couldn?t do anything. He didn?t know that if you wanted to change buses you had to get a transfer. He paid full fare each time. He didn?t know how to use a can opener.?

Since Mrs. Hannant didn?t know anything about the army, she made her character, David, played by Peter Frith into a retired Naval officer.

?The character was my father up to a point,? she said. ?When he was talking about his past, and how he met his wife and the things he learned in the Navy, that was all my father. Of course, my father didn?t end up like that. My father wasn?t as helpless as that, because he had my mother to teach him how to do things.?

Mrs. Hannant wrote her play in one draft on an electronic typewriter. She has a computer, but she hates writing script on it.

?I like to do the whole thing in my head, so I can just type it out the way I want it,? she said. ?I made long-hand notes just in terms of the order in which things were going to happen. It was just a series of headlines. When I am ready to write then I just write. The people at BMDS made a few small changes which I didn?t mind, but not whole chunks of the play.?

This was not Mrs. Hannant?s first writing project. She has written a monologue for Ruth Thomas, and also adapted other people?s work for radio while living in Canada for a few years. She is also no stranger to the theatre.

?I have been involved in the theatre scene for a long time, but mostly acting or doing props,? she said. ?The most interesting prop that I ever acquired I didn?t actually make myself. It was made by Paul McCoy. It was a whole lot of wire frame spectacles all fused together.

?The most interesting prop that I ever actually made myself was for an opera we did about Joan of Arc. The Dauphin had to have a sceptre and an orb. It is in the trophy case now. It is really quite gorgeous.?

Mrs. Hannant often asks visitors to the theatre to guess what the orb is made of. Few people guess correctly.

?I used the bowl out of a toilet bowl, because it was perfectly round and light weight,? she said. ?I spray-painted it gold and loaded it down with jewels.?

She found the toilet bowl ?orb? at a construction site.

?I was passing a house that was being demolished and it was lying on the ground,? she said. ?I asked the guys there if I could have the ball out of the toilet and they looked at me like I was crazy.?

She said she loves the challenge of making props, although in more recent years it has become a bit more burdensome to look for them.

?Although we have a big prop room at Daylesford there is always something we don?t have,? she said. ?I was doing set decoration as well which is furniture. People are amazing what they will lend you. One of the places that was wonderful was Waterloo House. They would let me borrow the chairs out of the bar and the blue love seat from the foyer. I would give them credit, of course.?

In ?Old Sailors Never Die? she used a few things that were her own as props including a small chest of drawers, a napkin ring and a picture of her father.

Mrs. Hannant said the end of ?Old Sailors Never Die? is not meant to imply a possible romance between her characters, David and Molly.

?No, that didn?t enter my head,? she said. ?What I wanted to put across was that, finally, there was some hope that David could stop wallowing in self pity and stop living in the past. He just wanted a friend. I visualise him becoming more relaxed and laid back and open to life?s possibilities.?

She was particularly happy with the actors and directors of her plays. In both plays she had one veteran actor and one newcomer.

In ?Old Sailors? Molly was played by Barbara Jones who is a veteran and David was played by Peter Frith, who had not acted since he was 18.

In fact, play organisers found Mr. Frith in the bar. Director Angus Brown saw Mr. Frith with some friends and thought he would be excellent for the part.

?He did a wonderful job,? said Mrs. Hannant. They were both wonderful. It was the first time Angus Brown had ever directed anything. He is very strong minded. He knows what he wants. He has a terrific eye for detail. A lot of the little touches, which some people may not have even noticed, were his, like when Molly took the hanky out of the drawer and didn?t close the drawer properly. David went over and closed it. He would do that. That was Angus? idea.?

Mrs. Hannant came to Bermuda in 1940 as a 14-year-old. Her parents in England sent her and her sister to Bermuda to escape the war. She attended the Bermuda High School for Girls. Her sister returned home after the war, but Mrs. Hannant married and stayed in Bermuda.

?My parents had been here before and had lots of friends,? she said. ?At that time Bermuda was still a Sterling area so they could send money to us.?

Mrs. Hannant has five children, nine grandchildren and one great grandchild. She urged elderly people to make use of their talents no matter how old they are.

?I wish more elderly people like me ? once they are retired and they have the time and the money ? would develop their skills,? she said. ?Give yourself something to do. That is how you prolong your life. I believe that with all my heart.?