A taxi driver gave his passenger more than a fare deal when he turned off the meter to help retrieve her lost mobile phone.

Philippa Brewer dropped her mobile worth more than £100 in the back of a cab she took from a garden party in Grove to her home in Newbury Street, Wantage.

When the 35-year-old got home and realised her phone was missing, she rang the number until a stranger's voice answered, claiming he had recently bought it for £5.

But within half an hour she was reunited with the phone after a taxi driver drove more than 15 miles to retrieve it, free of charge.

She said: "I rang the phone and eventually it answered. I can't tell you what the man was saying it was effing this and effing that.

"He said he bought it for a fiver and put the phone down on me."

She then rang the taxi firm who had taken her home, Mick Webb Taxis, of Wantage, who found out where the driver had gone after dropping her off and promised to return the phone.

The taxi driver, Martin Dawes, trawled through his list of fares and tracked the missing mobile phone down to a group of young men he had dropped off in Harwell.

Twenty minutes later, following a 16-mile round trip, he had the mobile phone in his hands and was bringing it back the grateful owner.

Mrs Brewer said: "To drop that amount of work was stunning. I also expected the stock response 'it's not in the back of the cab any more', but it was incredible. The phone was undamaged and call register showed it hadn't been used."

Mr Dawes said: "I've lost my phone before and it's such a pain to get it cancelled. When she phoned me, I had only taken two fares in between. I went to Harwell where the phone was and told the lads there it was my phone. They said sorry and gave it back.

"It's worth asking for things back, although I did drive a bit of a way for it."