WHAT you see above is a cartoon depiction of what happens when one of our many Champion readers wants to have a cross word about our crossword.

It's the first time I've been able to get across the multitude of angry people whenever the crossword's been given the wrong grid - or, heaven forfend, been missed out for a week altogether - because it's almost impossible to put to quantify the number of angry phone calls we'll get if we make a mistake with it. Sure, people get annoyed if there's something wrong with a story, but I've learnt that you should never get the crossword wrong. Ever.

Our reader's tongue-in-cheek contribution is also the perfect candidate for something called the Wall of Shame, which is something I'm quietly campaigning to get in the newsroom here at The Champion. It's something I was introduced to while working at The Rhyl Visiter two years ago, under the eye of an editor with a particularly brilliant sense of humour. It was, quite simply, a portion of our newsroom wall given over to the funny, the scarily incorrect or the downright weird.

One of my favourites from the Rhyl wall was an obviously Photoshopped picture which got used in the paper, which attempted to depict a seagull swooping down to swipe a pensioner's bag of chips. When the photographer couldn't catch the right moment out on the high street, it was decided to digitally add the gull in back on the newsroom computers. Unfortunately the picture - which did get published - actually showed what seemed to be a seagull the size of a Lancaster bomber, flying no more than ten feet above the shop roofs. I still find it funny to this day.

There's no Wall of Shame here just yet but if there was there'd be plenty of immediate candidates; gaffes not only from the opposition, but our paper as well, headlines with unfortunate double entendres, photos which end up going wrong for all sorts of reasons and, of course, cartoons contributed by readers cross with the cross word. I also think that as well as being amusing, the Wall of Shame serves a useful editorial purpose, because it'd keep us on our toes and on the lookout for mistakes.

The campaign for the Wall of Shame starts here!

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