SHE is the 817th Mayor of Winchester, but the first Mayor to Tweet.

From a standing start on becoming Mayor in May this year, Cllr Jane Rutter has tweeted about all her official engagements and charity fund-raising events.

Last week, with the number of followers approaching 800, Jane decided it would be fun to identify her 817th follower and invite them to Abbey House, her official residence, to be presented with a bottle of celebratory fizz.

She was helped by the energetic efforts of the Winchester Half Marathon Twitter team to pass the word around the ‘twittersphere’ and in just two days reached the magic number.

The Mayor’s 817th follower was 24 year-old third year student Eryn White, who just happens to have one of the Mayor’s Mace-bearers, Barbara Colson as her landlady!

Barbara went with Eryn to Abbey House on Monday (October 17) to meet the Mayor and receive her prize.

She said: “I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to meet the Mayor of Winchester, and am over the moon to have won such a lovely prize for following her on Twitter. I will definitely be keeping up to date with all her future posts. Thank you for such a kind gesture”.

Eryn is studying for her degree in events management, and will be receiving another prize later this week for outstanding academic achievement from the University of Winchester.

Mayor Jane Rutter added: “It was lovely to meet Eryn and clearly she is a hard-working and successful student. I congratulate her on her academic achievement and wish her all success in the future as she steps into the world of work.”

You can follow the Mayor on twitter by searching for @MayorWinchester.