THE voice at the other end of the line sounded very annoyed. There'd been an enormous error in yesterday's Champion, and I, the person responsible, was a disgrace.

Was it the ongoing controversy over the county council's decision to scrap funding for Dial A Ride? Was it the claims that three town hall executives took home more than £100,000 in the last financial year? Or the one where an Ormskirk residents' group had accused councillors of appearing to nod off altogether in meetings? Certainly, there were a few hard-hitting claims flying about, so I was expecting a call.

But not, as it turned out, over a caption for a Comic Relief picture, showing two NHS staff with the cakes they were selling for Red Nose Day. My crime, as it turns out, was to use the word "cooking" in a story about baking cakes.

"You can't say cooking when the story's about baking," the reader angrily insisted. "They're two completely different disciplines!"

I was going to, for the sake of argument, point out that for the sake of not boring our readers solid with repetition that we do occasionally vary the words we use in The Champion. Certainly, I could have pointed out that, according to the highly dubious source that is the Oxford English Dictionary that baking can be defined as:

"To cook (food) by dry heat without direct exposure to a flame, typically in an oven".

Or Wikipedia's effort, which explains:

"Baking is the technique of prolonged cooking of food"

So baking is a form of cooking. I could also have pointed out that - although I'm no Gordon Ramsey - that nobody cares. Arguing that baking and cooking are two completely different disciplines is like arguing that Cumbria and the Lake District are totally seperate places.

I eagerly await the letter from Greggs' lawyers to tell me I'm wrong.

|