Misprints

In the early 90s, a friend working on a newspaper in the north of England sent me a cutting from his paper.

They used a primitive scanner to scan in agency copy for their horoscopes page, which apparently went straight to press without any human intervention, because Virgos were confidently informed: 'Today is an ideal day to spend in the anus of the one you love.' I always wonder how many innocent followers of the astrological arts had their lives changed forever that day.

These things can happen so easily, though. Back at my first job in local newspapers, a high-spirited colleague decided it would be a fabulous jape to change the title of Del Amitri's album 'Waking Hours' in our album charts (prepared off the top of their heads by the lovely staff at the nearest branch of Our Price) to 'Wanking Hours', which was made all the more hilarious by the presence, one step up the charts, of Suzanne Vega's 'Days of Open Hand', How we laughed, until the following day when the papers came in and we realised no one had changed it back to 'Waking Hours' again before sending it off. We would've gotten away with it, too, if only some sneak hadn't sent a cutting of it to the NME, who printed it.

Still, no harm done. Not like the poor woman in Glasgow who, in 2019, was suffering blurred vision and swollen eyelids after being prescribed medication for a dry eye. Bad handwriting on the prescription meant that, instead of the ocular lubricant Vita-POS, she had been rubbing Vitaros, an erectile dysfunction cream, into her eyes.

Worse still, imagine the societal mayhem caused by a misprint - or was it? - in the Bible produced in 1631 by royal printers Barker & Lucas, which became a much sought-after collectors' item known as 'The Wicked Bible' after ordering pious readers: 'Thou shalt commit adultery.'