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The Affair That Never Was

The Steeple Times
The Affair That Never Was – Ben Fogle, Ben Foden and the Daily Mail – As the Mail Online makes yet another balls-up, The Steeple Times suggests that Lord Rothermere hire a decent copy checker – Rugby player Ben Foden supposedly embarked on a relationship with PR woman Becky Milne whilst still married to ‘The Saturday’s’ singer Una Healy; television presenter Ben Fogle was mistakenly brought into the mix by a rather ineffectual ‘Mail Online’ copychecker – The story of The Man Who Never Was was inspired by an incident involving Dame Paddy Ridsdale, Ian Fleming’s secretary and later the inspiration for the Bond character Miss Moneypeny, during the Second World War

As the Mail Online makes yet another balls-up, The Steeple Times suggests that Lord Rothermere hire a decent copy checker

 

As was the case with the amazing yet surprisingly true story of The Man Who Never Was and his affair with the woman who ultimately became the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Bond character Miss Moneypenny, last night the Mail Online created a similarly ridiculous work of fiction by mistakenly changing a few letters in one of their main news items.

 

In the first edition of a header for an article about a star who’d taken to the dating app Bumble to “seek someone who isn’t uptight,” the paper falsely suggested that the somewhat drippy adventurer turned television presenter Ben Fogle was divorcing a woman (a singer and ‘Hottest Female 2009’ named Una Healey) who isn’t even his wife and having an affair with another (an until now unknown PR woman named Becky Milne) he’s unlikely never met also. Instead, they meant to reference a somewhat vain rugby player who likes to get his kit off for photoshoots called Ben Foden but somehow got the surnames mixed up.

 

Though errors happen at all levels, the Daily Mail – a paper that is part of a company with a revenue of nearly £2 billion annually and a vast staff of around 10,000 globally – could surely do better. This was not a story that was run on Page 54 in the graveyard section, but one that they have plastered as headline news and run as story number one online also.

 

We may well be living in the era of hashtags and fake news and are certainly currently in August’s ‘silly season’, but come on Lord Rothermere – employ yourself a bloody half-decent copy checker.

 

Pictured top: Rugby player Ben Foden (left) supposedly embarked on a relationship with PR woman Becky Milne (second left) whilst still married to ‘The Saturdays’ singer Una Healy (second from right); television presenter Ben Fogle was mistakenly brought into the mix by a rather ineffectual ‘Mail Online’ copy checker.

 

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The Daily Mail’s first header to the story began “Ben Fogle” (left) whilst later they were forced to amend it to the correct name: “Ben Foden”; surprisingly this mistake was made in a story that they ran as their number one headline on the Mail Online.
The acclaimed 1956 film ‘The Man Who Never Was’ was based on the true story of a British attempt to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily’s defenses before their 1943 attack there, using a dead man with faked papers. The late Dame Paddy Ridsdale, at one time Ian Fleming’s secretary and the inspiration for the Bond character Miss Moneypenny, formed part of the plot and pretended to be having an affair with the aforementioned dead man in order to aid the deception.

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