Cherie Blair - My Fake Diary

Monday, 3 September 2012

Eleven years ago, the Independent's Guy Keleny began the column that would become Errors and Omissions. Now, 600 editions down the line, John Rentoul presents a selection of his finest pedantry - this was one with me in it...

September 30 2006

Monday's paper contained a crashingly uninformative picture caption.

On the Labour conference page was a "stand-alone" picture with no story.

The caption said: "Cherie Blair wears a mask as she tosses a pancake during a tour of the stands at the G-Mex Centre in Manchester yesterday." That was it.

Mrs Blair was in fact wearing not a mask but a blindfold, as the picture shows.

But why was she trying to toss a pancake blindfolded? And did she succeed?

Whoever allowed this deplorable caption into the paper clearly did not credit the likes of you and me with the alertness to raise such questions...