A DORSET Echo delivery boy has won an award for designing an online computer game.

Christopher Kitching, 13, of Maunsell Avenue, Preston, Weymouth, who taught himself how to programme computers and designed an online game, was a finalist in a national technology competition.

Sylvia Knake, the librarian at Budmouth Technology College, nominated Christopher for the Flipside Award for science and technology.

Christopher and his parents attended the award ceremony at the Institute of Engineering and Technology Building on the South Bank in London.

Proud father David Kitching said: "They described Christopher as a budding Bill Gates' and one of the chaps assessing the projects said that if the computer game had been fully operational he would probably have won."

Christopher was given the runner-up prize, an MP3 player, by television personality Adam Hart-Davis during a ceremony in which senior engineers were also receiving awards.

The winner of the Flipside Award was a 16-year-old boy from Wick in northern Scotland, who had made radio contact with the International Space Station.

The game Christopher has developed is called Earth Nemesis.

Christopher said: "I used to play games all the time but then I thought, this is getting boring, so I thought I would make my own.

"So I looked around and I found Flash, which is usually used for online applications, and I used it to develop a space game.

"At the moment you can just fly around in a spaceship and shoot people, but I hope to develop a whole virtual universe where you can do whatever you like, build spaceships and have wars."

The game is being run on Budmouth's server.

Mr Kitching, who is an engineer, said: "If we did not drag Christopher off the computer he would stay there all night."

Christopher also likes athletics and his favourite subject at school is maths.

He said: "I like maths because it is useful for programming but I find information technology at school mind-bogglingly boring."

Christopher is hoping to do something related to computer programming when he grows up.