Community features

Everyone has a story to tell, and the BBC wants to hear yours. If you enter your real life tale into the My Story competition you may see it retold on BBC One as well as winning a fantastic prize.

The competition closes on 16 December. To take part, visit the My Story website. You can enter online, or print off a postal form.

To give you inspiration, we already have examples from people from Stoke and Staffordshire, who've already given their entries to the BBC. Click on the links in the top right-hand corner of this page for some of them, and there are some more too, as you go down this page:-

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My Story: Peter Nolan

Forty years ago Peter Nolan, from Stafford, was living and working in Libya, as a ward nurse at Tripoli’s main hospital.

It was September 1969, and the ruling monarchy was being overthrown by a group of young nationalist army officers, led by Colonel Muammar al Gaddafi.

That same Colonel Gaddafi was brought into hospital under armed guard for a medical check.

Peter was asked to take his pulse and blood pressure in a chance encounter with someone who – as Peter puts it – ‘had an impact on the world’. Click on the link below to hear Peter's story.

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My Story: Lee Pearson

Lee Pearson is one of the UK's most decorated sportsmen. In all, the para-equestrian rider from Cheddleton in the Staffordshire Moorlands has a 100% record at the Paralympics, winning a total of nine gold medals.

But it could have been so much more different for the 35 year old, who recounts his unusual start to life...

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My Story: Tom Doubtfire

Seeing Africa was always a dream for Tom Doubtfire and when he was offered a job in Ghana he jumped at the chance.

He knew it would be an experience but it was just before he came home that the real adventure started...

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My Story: Crimea Price

Crimea Price is a traveller, in his seventies, who lives at the caravan site in Silverdale. In his younger days he travelled all over the place - mostly around Scotland - where he worked on shipyards loading and unloading cargo.

He'll never forget the day in 1945 when he was working on a container ship of explosives docked at Stranraer:-