ANNA WATT, half of Scots singing duo Fran and Anna, who died last week at 85, was laid to rest yesterday at Old Monkland Cemetery, alongside her sister Fran, who died in 2003. Showbiz Writer BRIAN BEACOM joined the mourners at the funeral service at St Augustine's RC Church in Coatbridge.

THEY were pure Hollywood - in a Coatbridge kind of way.

If Brigadoon could have featured two middle-aged sisters who wore tartan jodhpurs, tammies the size of giant tattie scones and enough make-up to paint the Waverley, then Fran and Anna would have been Tinseltown stars.

Instead, they made their own way in showbiz, following their father David Watt - aka ventriloquist Valentine Prince - into the music halls.

The Prince Sisters, as they were known, trod thousands of boards but never hit the big time - nor even the quite big time.

And there may have been a couple of reasons for the lack of serious success - the girls just weren't taken seriously Not only were they not the greatest singers to come out of Scotland, they weren't even the greatest singers to come out of Coatbridge.

The girls would never have been mistaken for their English counterparts, the Beverley Sisters, the slim, glamorous blondes who sold out venues across Britain and married famous men.

Fran and Anna didn't marry anyone, preferring to live with their family all their lives. But none of that mattered, because as the hundreds who attended yesterday's funeral highlighted, Fran and Anna had their own followers.

That audience was created in the 1970s by Jack McLaughlin, the irreverent presenter of STV's tartan music show Thingummyjig.

Jack brought Fran and Anna on to the show and each week he took the mickey out of the pair, the gruesome twosome'. He talked about them being mutton dressed as mutton'.

But every one of Jack's put-downs helped propel the sisters even higher into the national consciousness.

It didn't matter that the very names Fran and Anna' were synonymous with bad taste, where for years to come every oddly-dressed pair of lassies at the dancing would be labelled A pair of Fran and Annas'.

Fran and Anna revelled in the jokes, even sending Thank You cards to journalists who had fun at their expense.

They knew every joke meant they were being talked about and that gave booking agents a reason to hire them.

The singing sisters may have been brought up in a coal mining town in the 1920s, a far cry from the famous MGM lots, but they were never ordinary.

Canon Jim Foley, who led yesterday's service for Anna, said: "She had a hectic career but there was another side that we have come to know very well, her spiritual life.

"This parish and community of faith meant everything to her."

He recalled how the sisters wouldn't go out without their wigs or appear without their giant sunglasses - even in darkest winter.

Nor would they go to the shops without their false eyelashes.

The pair with the little red faces and stubby legs were natural entertainers.

And they worked tirelessly for charity, receiving British Empire Medals in 1989.

Fran and Anna will be remembered not for their singing talent, but for their self-belief and sense of fun.

If they were around today, at their mini-kilted best, you could just imagine them storming Britain's Got Talent.