A football fan has won £5,000 after betting on Leicester City to win the Premier League, in a “moment of madness”.

James O’Donoghue put £1 on the Foxes to be named champions in September last year when the odds were 5000-1.

Now the bookies are paying out a total of £25m in what is being cited as the biggest loss in British history on a single sporting market.

Mr O’Donoghue is a life-long Chelsea fan and placed his £1 online bet on Leicester as he was putting a bet on his beloved club to win the title.

The 54-year old from Rochester said: “It was a moment of madness. I was putting £1 on Chelsea to win and I thought I would bet on Leicester as well. They were top of the league at the time.”

Mr O’Donoghue was glued to his TV last night watching Leicester’s rivals Tottenham Hotspur take on Chelsea.

The game ended 2-2, handing Leicester the league title for the first time in the club’s 132-year history.

He plans on spending his winning on his three sons; Nick, 25, Ant, 22 and Dan 17, as well as giving some donations to charity and putting the rest towards a deposit for a new car.

He said: “People have been asking me if I wished I had put on more. In hindsight of course I wish I had but the way I see it is I’ve got a £5,000 bonus I wasn’t expecting.

“I’m always very cautious with my bets, my sons take the mickey out of me because I put 10p or 20p on accumulator bets on a Saturday.”

After placing the bet in September, only a few games into the season, Mr O’Donoghue has been following Leicester’s progress.

He said: “I couldn’t believe it when they were still top at Christmas and then they carried on winning. It was nail biting towards the end.”