A Westlife fan is celebrating after pictures of her with the band which she thought had been lost were recovered by an Argus photographer.

Kirsty Murray, 12, from Bevendean, Brighton, was left heartbroken when pictures of her backstage with her heroes at the Brighton Centre were wiped by a security guard.

She had been looking forward to the show after she won a Southern FM competition to meet the band.

Her pictures were deleted during the concert when a security guard assumed her mother Natasha was using the camera to record a video of the performance and wiped all the data from the digital memory card.

Kirsty was so upset she barely slept or ate for two days so Mrs Murray contacted The Argus to complain.

Staff photographer Darren Cool was sent to take pictures of Kirsty and offered to try to retrieve the images from the memory card, which he did at home in his own time.

Kirsty said: "It's such a relief. I'll always remember meeting them but now I've got the proof as well."

Mrs Murray said: "Darren was such a nice chap. He said he'd try to sort it out for us on his machine at home and he brought the card back the same day, along with prints of the pictures.

"Natasha's so happy. Meeting Westlife was a once-in-a-lifetime event for her but she had nothing to show for it except her memories."

Darren, 21, said: "Kirsty was absolutely gutted about losing the pictures but it's happened to me a million times so I'm quite good at getting pictures off memory cards.

"I've got the software and the computer at home and it only took me about ten minutes to do. The look on her face when she got the pictures made it worthwhile."

Both the Brighton Centre and Westlife's tour company deny a security guard deleted the pictures.