A politician's "spur of the moment" idea for Comic Relief left her more than £14,000 out of pocket after promising £1 for every retweet she received on Twitter.

Slough MP Fiona Mactaggart, who once spent Red Nose Day dressed as a chicken when she was a teacher, has donated £14,268 to the charity after thousands of people retweeted her post on the social networking site.

Although she had always planned to write a cheque for Comic Relief, the Labour MP said she had the sum of £10,000 in mind, and admitted she was "a bit" worried as the number of retweets steadily increased.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.