One of the UK's first supermodels - who went on to become a medal-winner at the Paralympic Games - has died.

Dianne Bond and her identical twin sister Pamela were famous faces all over the country in the late 1950s when they were 21 and modelling as the Toni Twins, showcasing the most fashionable hairstyle of the age, the perm.

The sisters modelled for several other companies before Dianne went to India with her then husband.

While she was there, working for the civil service in Madras, Dianne was paralysed giving birth to her only son, Michael, now 49.

Aged 28, she separated from her husband and returned to England, where she met and married disabled athlete Dick Thompson, who was going for gold at the 1960 Wheelchair Olympics in Rome.

But it was his Dianne who stole the show, winning silver in fencing and bronze in archery - a sport she took up at Ponteland Archery Club only a few years before.

Mrs Bond died on Saturday, aged 77, from a heart attack at her home in Ponteland, Northumbria. Last night, her twin Pamela, who is staying in Ponteland, said: "Dianne was the kind of person who wouldn't let anything get her down - I am missing her terribly."