If you want to find mistakes in newspapers, just look at the pictures.
It is a fact that day-in, day-out that's where you will find everything from the plain daft to the outright libellous.
Not sure why, but I think it's something to do with the process by which pages are put together. Quite often the designer who draws the page, the sub who subs the copy and writes the caption, the person who crops the picture are all working in isolation and not always communicating.
That's the charitable way of considering what happened to a friend of mine who pitched up at my house on Friday with a copy of that day's Sun in his hand.
Mike Newbould is a former captain in the Welsh Guards, and a man who served his country with nothing but honour up until his retirement several years ago.
He was therefore somewhat surprised to be bombarded with calls and texts from brother officers on Friday morning who said he was in that day's Sun.
"We thought you'd left, but take a look at page 27," they said.
Sure enough, there on page 27, and on the Sun's website was a story about a Welsh Guards officer, Rob Gallimore, who, the Sun claimed, had got into hot water having allegedly stripped off in the NCOs' mess on the Falklands and tried to lead a naked conga.
But, and this is where it gets messy, a mugshot, purportedly of Maj Gallimore, was in fact a picture of Capt Newbould, taken when he was serving with the Welsh Guards in Macedonia.
Now, the caption read "Gallimore", but given the number of calls Mike took when his picture appeared, it was clear he was recognisable as the person in the photograph.
Mike decided to call The Sun, to point out the error, but, he said, got nowhere. The best they could offer, when informed of what is clearly a defamatory publication was: "I'll put you through to the picture desk."
The picture has since been removed from the version of the story on the Sun's website.
At this stage Mike has not involved lawyers, all he wants is a correction, and a small donation to Help for Heroes - a charity for which he has raised funds with an epic bike ride, and one of the Sun's favourite charities too. You would have thought that would not be too much to ask.
This is where my sympathy for libel reform is somewhat taxed. For every honest journalist gagged by the chilling effect of a libel threat, you have the sort of moronic response displayed by The Sun to a very genuine complaint. Quite frankly if they haven't the wit to sort this out then they deserve everything they get.
If I were on The Sun's newsdesk, I would get on the phone to Captain Newbould pretty bloody sharpish, before a no-win, no-fee lawyer with pound signs in his eyes gets there first.
POST SCRIPT: By Monday morning the article about Maj Gallimore had been removed entirely, although, as is often the case, Google's search results still carry the gist of what had been published. Not sure why this is, the pic had already been removed, so whether the story is subject of another complaint I'm not sure. Haven't seen today's print edition of the Sun, but there's no apology to Mike that I can find on the website.

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