The WI members who bared all to make a mint for charity are now bidding to take America by storm.

And with Rylstone & District WI's exploits continuing to attract interest from around the globe, the calendar girls from the Yorkshire Dales may also make it big in Japan and a host of other countries.

The ladies hit the headlines last year after posing nude for their alternative calendar, which went on to sell-out all 88,000 copies and raise £331,000 for the Leukaemia Research Fund.

Now the WI is to get even more exposure thanks to plans for a further 200,000 copies of the calendar to be printed for sale in the US and beyond.

The ladies have already been front page news in the New York Times and featured on US television. Thousands of requests for calendars have flooded in from around the world via the Internet and there are even plans to turn the women's story into a feature film.

Meanwhile a 12-minute documentary about the women is set to be shown during America's popular 20/20 magazine news programme on Friday.

The calendar's Miss October, Tricia Stewart, 50, who lives and runs her own business in Cracoe, near Skipton, said: "We're hoping the calendars will go on sale in the US over the next couple of weeks - there's been so much interest there I think there'll be a massive demand for them.

Proceeds generated by sales of the American calendars will be split between leukaemia research in the US and UK.

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