Tickets have sold out for the national premiere of Calendar Girls, the film about 11 Women's Institute members who stripped for a calendar in memory of a friend who died of leukaemia.

All 1,800 seats have been snapped up for the glitzy occasion at the Odeon in London's Leicester Square on Tuesday.

There are still some £25 tickets available for the northern premiere being screened at the 1,000-seat cinema at The Light in the Headrow, Leeds, on Wednesday.

Stars Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton and Geraldine James will join the original Calendar Girls - members of Rylestone and District WI near Skipton - at both premieres.

There will also be a special showing of the movie at Skipton's Plaza on Wednesday, September 10, two days before it goes on general release nationwide.

There were hundreds of requests for the free tickets for that event, and the 200 seats have already been allocated by the film producers.

In the audience will be the WI members whose naked calendar raised more than £500,000 for Leukaemia Research and inspired the movie. Also attending will be people living in the Skipton area, including farmers and house owners, whose land and property were featured when the film was shot in the area last summer.

The Buena Vista-funded film tells how the 11 women, mostly in their 50s and 60s, shot to worldwide fame after launching their own calendar to raise cash in memory of John Baker, a Yorkshire Dales National Park officer who died aged 54 in 1998.

The calendar, which featured his wife Angela, made the women household names.

Tricia Stewart, of Cracoe, near Skipton, who came up with the idea, said: "I said right at the beginning we'd be on bill boards and now we're all over the London tube system. Now we're just waiting to be on the side of buses!

"Wherever we go, people want to see the real women, and the word most people use about the calendar is 'inspirational'."

The film has already had a special showing at the Locarno film festival in Switzerland on a 26 metre by 14 metre screen in front of an audience of 10,000.

It is due to be shown at the Vlissinger film festival in Holland and will have its Irish premiere in Dublin next month.

The film will have its US premiere in December.

Royalties from the film and profits from a new calendar featuring photographs of the screen stars, now on sale, will go to Leukaemia Research.

Anyone wanting tickets for the Leeds showing should ring 0208 222 2580.