Sarah Smith forgets her mum

A brilliantly amusing spot from Charlie, posted on the Open Thread...

BBCs Sarah Smith tweeted this at 10am this morning:

Four hours later she tweeted a clarification:

As Charlie says, she is ex-Labour leader John Smith's daughter and her mum was made a Dame.

Even worse for her, The Lordly Adonis (who has just written a book about the great Ernest Bevin) then chipped in, adding that "Florence Bevin was given a damehood after the death of Ernie Bevin in 1951", adding that "There is a long list of wives of top politicians being honoured - wives of Disraeli, Churchill, Gaitskell & Major all got damehoods or peerages". 

To quote Charlie's summary: "As a BBC political editor you might expect she should be better informed or at least check her facts before tweeting".

Roger Mosey, David Jordan and Tom Mangold, though all thankfully still alive, must be turning in their graves,

Maybe we need a new Law. Shall we call it Lewis's Law?: 

BBC journalists who seek to pander to the partisan world of Twitter will end up compromising the BBC's reputation for impartiality (and, possibly, making complete fools of themselves too).

In fairness to Sarah Smith though, at least she didn't delete her embarrassing tweet, but left it up and added a rather charming apologia. 

I approve of that. Others just delete their embarrassing tweets and move on (including the man who inspired my naming of Lewis's Law).