A SCHOOLGIRL from York rubbed shoulders with the Duchess of Cornwall, Chris Evans and Zoe Ball after reaching the final of a national creative writing competition.

Nine-year-old Sophia Savkovic, went to Windsor Castle as one of the finalists in the BBC 500 words story writing contest. There were 113,000 entrants from all over the United Kingdom and the Park Grove Primary Academy pupil reached the top 25 in her age category. The final was broadcast live on the Radio 2 breakfast show with singer Tom Walker and band Busted entertaining the finalists.

At Windsor Castle Sophia and her mum Diane met the Duchess and celebrities such as David Walliams, Konnie Huq, Hugh Bonneville, Sandi Toksvig and Helen McCrory. She also met various children’s authors and book illustrators.

Sophia’s story is about a boy who decides to eat the dictionary so he can be as clever as one of his classmates.

He is then chosen as his classmate’s replacement in the world’s brainiest kids competition but things don’t go exactly to plan.

Sophia’s story wasn’t one of the top three medal winners but she was delighted to be one of the finalists and plans to enter the competition again next year.

She said: “It was all very exciting and I loved everything about it - the live music, meeting the celebrities and hearing the other winning stories.”

As The Press reported yesterday, Sophia’s school is currently fundraising to buy new books for the school library.

You can read Sophia's story by clicking here.