A Load of Mispants

Like many children born in the 1950s I spent the first few years of my life television-free. There was great excitement when a little square box appeared in our front room, and even more of a frenzy when we kids realised you could press a button to switch it on, and change between two channels by twiddling a knob on the front. In the days before technology really took off, that tiny box provided hours of entertainment.

We watched anything - well, anything deemed suitable by our mum and dad, who were meticulous in their scanning and couldn’t possibly have foreseen the dangers of the Internet fifty years hence.

In the absence of much variety, one of the programmes I really loved was Mr Pastry, a clumsy, bumbling old man, who was constantly tripping over and dropping things. At the time - and at the age of seven - it was hilarious. With hindsight, it seems strange that the TV was placed where it was, as the room was waiting to be decorated, and I vividly remember the one and only chair, an old wooden dining chair, painted pale blue. It's now pink and resides in my old bedroom at my mum’s. Needless to say, that chair was the most coveted piece of furniture by us kids. Frequently fought over, it was used proudly by the winner who had to have a very strong bladder in order to maintain his position. Many a time, all three of us would be unceremoniously removed from the room by my mum marching in, switching off the TV and dragging us - in a bundle - out into the hall.

Anyway, back to Mr Pastry. In one of the first programmes, we met his assistant and sidekick, Miss Print. This was my first introduction to a ‘play on words.’ It took me a while to realise there was a double meaning, but once I did I thought it was really funny.

I used to have a folder full of misprints cut out of newspapers. I’ve no idea what happened to them and I can’t remember most of them, but I do recall that the classified ads in the local paper were the most likely to harbour the dreaded misprints.

There was the 3 bedroomed hose; the dining table 3” x 4” (for anybody under about 50, that’s three inches by four inches), seats six; and I still wonder whether anybody bought the large wooden picture farm. The Guardian was known as the Grauniad for good reason. It even had a daily section apologising for the previous day’s mistakes:

Quote 'Readers were informed that the 2003 spring season at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon would feature “The Taming of the Screw”. Anyone spluttering over their morning muesli at this point might have reached for Glaxo’s “controversial treatment for irritable bowl syndrome”, as we once had it. If further proof were needed of the havoc one missing letter can produce, among the highlights expected at Glastonbury 2010 was the group Frightened Rabbi. “[That] should have been the Scottish band Frightened Rabbit,” deadpanned the next day’s corrections column.'

Too many Guardian examples to quote them all, but find more here.

The following images aren't from the Guardian, but they did amuse me.

I’m a bit of a pedant where spelling and punctuation are concerned. I think describing some of the errors I see on social media as misprints is actually giving pretty wide leeway. I bite my tongue and sit on my hands these days.

However one of my favourites was not a misprint, but a mishearing, which I’m sneaking in here. Listening to the radio one day I was shocked to hear a Scottish announcer reporting on new ‘Anti-Stocking Laws.’ I was about to explode in a frenzy of feminist ranting, when the article continued and I realised, with relief, that the Scottish accent meant that ‘stalking’ sounded very similar to ’stocking.’

It's All Just a Load of Mispants

by Jill Ready

Off to the theatre 

The Taming of the Screw

But first

Let's tackle this 

Irritable bowl

that's been bugging me 

Then

lip sick on

Brush the air

do my yes

Mustn't forget to lick the door

quietly

so the dog doesn't start to bake

I'm meeting Pet

at the local pube 

He says it's goo in there

Two pins each and we're ready to go

Halfway there and the bell begins to grumble

Oh no

where are the to lets? 

Something pasty is about to happen

I make it, Justin Tim

Pew!

The play was good but still wandering about the screw.....

Thanks for reading,   Jill