AN experiment to show how far a photograph can travel around the world online could see a local police officer in line for a soaking.

As part of Internet Safety Month, Bury South PC Andy Ferguson will be speaking to year five and six pupils at St Mary’s RC Primary School, Radcliffe.

PC Ferguson shared a picture of Paul Heaton, the school’s headteacher, in the stocks on the GMP Prestwich Facebook page on Sunday.

He has asked as many people as possible to like and share the image — and if it gets one million likes PC Ferguson will go in the stocks for a soaking.

A second picture of PC Ferguson was uploaded to the GMP Prestwich Twitter page on Sunday to see how many times it would be retweeted.

PC Ferguson said: “In just a few days, the pictures have already been shared in Thailand, Australia, Canada, Turkey, Germany, Denmark and Ireland as well as across Greater Manchester.

“The retweets of the picture of me on Twitter mean it has so far reached 45,659 people.

“This will show the children that even if they upload an innocent photo of themselves online, where it goes and who sees it can very quickly be outside their control without them having to do anything else.

“We want to teach children how to use the internet safely and advise parents on how to protect their youngsters online.

“We will continue to raise awareness of this subject across the borough.”

Mr Heaton said: “A lot of the children at our school can be very slapdash with their internet security.

“We want to show them how easy it is to lose control of something on the internet. With something online, you have to know who it is going to.

“Andy has come up with this great experiment to show the children how far something can travel online.”