WILL no one rid me of these turbulent journalists? I hope I won't be taken literally. Nearly everyone knows what happened when four medieval knights heard their king say something similar. They galloped off to Canterbury to murder a priest in the cathedral.

However, judging by a story in last Thursday's paper, I reckon some of my colleagues were reading comics under the desk when the details of that dark deed came up in their history lessons. Otherwise we would not have let our howler about Thomas Becket into print.

We only jumped six Harrys and put Holy Tom on the wrong king's chopping list. It was, of course, Henry II who sealed the Archbishop's fate by musing aloud in 1170. We were 340 years too late and pinned the blame on the tubby Tudor.

Thanks to R F Osborne from Brighton, J S Mitchell from Hove and Maurice Packham from Horsham for spotting that one. Former teacher Maurice must despair of us. Only three weeks ago he had to point out we had the Romans invading Britain two hundred years too soon.

This week he sent me a marvellous ditty to help us with our monarchs. Sadly, I haven't got room for it but I'm sure you've heard it. It begins with Willy, Willy, goes on to take in James the Vain and James Again and ends up with our own dear Queen.

It's going to be required reading for some around here.

Apologies now to Derek Jay of Brighton Sheepskin Shop. We wrongly said a couple of weeks ago in a story about the future of shopping in Brighton that his shop in Duke Street was being forced to close.

It was an error in rewriting. As Derek made clear to our reporter, it was only because he is now 77 he is giving up the business. Derek proudly tells me he and his wife built up the business over the past 30 years and they had customers from all over the world.

We were too swift with the blue pencil in editing a letter from John Stone of Hove. As he pointed out, if we had printed the last two sentences of his letter about school tables, we would have spared councillor Pat Hawkes having to reply to his questions as to the value of attainment tests.

We should have let Mr Stone express his view that diagnostic tests applied sensibly where there is a need can indicate areas of study to pursue for an individual child but blanket testing of all children never did and never will raise standards.

Anyone for tennis? The phones here were jangling after Tuesday's story about Tony Kennedy being allowed to keep his £125,000 prize on TV's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire despite giving a wrong answer. The correct answer to the question about the theoretical minimum number of strokes with which a tennis player can win a set is 12, not 24 as both the show's computer and Mr Kennedy said. How can that be, asked many of you.

Here goes. Assume a 6-0 victory and you'll serve three times. At four points to win a game you need 12 aces. Then, when it's your turn to receive, your hapless opponent double-faults every time.

Just theory, and the Lawn Tennis Association don't think it's ever happened. They did tell me the answer could also be zero - if your opponent sprained an ankle walking on to court. Ooh, I say!

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.