Captain Moonlight: Newspaper corrections

CAPTAIN Moonlight, being the kind of man he is, takes a close interest in newspaper corrections. Last Tuesday's Times provided a particularly splendid example of the form: 'The Paddington Bear books were written by Michael Bond and not by Edward Bond, as reported on October 15.' What an imaginative confusion from Mr Murdoch's broadsheet: Paddington is, of course, a blameless bear from Peru with a penchant for marmalade, while Edward Bond is, of course, the radical playwright famed for his doomy 'ground-breaking' works including The Pope's Wedding and Saved, notorious for the scene in which a baby is stoned to death which so shocked the Lord Chamberlain in 1965. But just think how much more shocking it would have been if they had stoned Paddington rather than the baby. Bond E, working on a play in his summerhouse, could not be disturbed to consider the implications of all this. Bond M said Paddington had been extremely upset by the mistake but was still on the marmalade.