HE'S a world-famous cartoon character best known for his role in Disney films - but now his image has been used in a very different way.

Chris Wood, UKIP's candidate for Gosport, was delighted after he gained more than 9,200 votes in the general election - a rise of nearly 8,000 on what the party managed in 2010.

And in spite of this success one vote stood out above the rest after a resident marked their ballot paper using an image of Mickey Mouse.

Although the voter may have been intending their cartoon drawing to go down as a spoiled paper, Mr Wood said that it counted as a vote for him.

In a social media post he wrote: “Someone decided to draw a picture of Mickey Mouse in my box on the ballot paper, it counted as a vote for me.

“Thank you.”

Mr Wood, a Hampshire County Councillor and Fareham Borough Councillor, managed to increase UKIP's share of the vote in Gosport from 3.2 per cent in 2010 to 19.4 per cent.

And he was not the only candidate across the UK to benefit from an unusual ballot paper making.

Glyn Davies, Conservative MP for Montgomeryshire, revealed that a voter had drawn a “detailed representation” of a male sex organ on their paper, while there were reports that a drawing of Homer Simpson had been scrawled on ballot paper in Lewes, near Brighton.