Much coverage in the national and local press over the past few days about an embarrassing slip-up by Virgin Media, which sent a Nottingham man a direct mail pack addressed to "Mr Illegal Immigrant".

I was relieved to find that, just for once, the blame wasn't laid at the printer's door via the usual "printing error". Instead, Virgin pinned the mistake on an unnamed third party, the source of the marketing database containing the erroneous information.

It's surprising it wasn't picked up, though, as I thought various filters were employed to weed out bogus and mischievous entries such as this. I imagine all providers will be on high alert now, because someone, somewhere is bound to be thinking this is a great idea and a hilariously jolly jape. They will be typing the exact same thing, or likely enough a more offensive variant, into a capture screen at this very minute.

It did put me in mind of a journalistic and premedia truism. That being to never, ever put in spoof copy for something like a caption or a headline, because the Law of Sod decrees it will end up in print. Having a caption appear that says: "Two line caption to go here in 11pt" is annoying and embarrassing. However, one that says "Caption for pic of big-nosed ugly bloke" (or worse) is likely to lead to a brief moment of glory in Private Eye, followed swiftly by a P45.