In the early hours, my first indication after 17 months that my brother had read The True History of The Black Adder came with a text, pointing out that, although the great Nicola Bryant had been properly credited in the Appendixes, in the text itself I had passingly called her ‘Nicola Bradbury’. He then went on to talk at length about her cleavage in Doctor Who, of course.

This mistake was made in spite of the fact that I was perfectly aware that her name is Nicola Bryant, had always had as much of a thing for her as any other male or lesbian TV geek, and had never knowingly for any one second thought her name was, would be, or ever could be, Nicola Bradbury. And yet, there the error is, in my original text, totally uncommented on by anyone until this day.

When you consider the immense and painful battles which have been fought over every single tic in the TTHoTBA text at every stage, from composition to paperback and e-Book, the pain of this one single clunker sitting right in the middle of the ultimate version of the text is something which I don’t believe anyone in the world can quite imagine. All that quadruple fact-checking, all that agonising over formatting errors. Nicola Bryant.

Well that’s my weekend greatly marred. Blessed as I am with a head that is emptier than a hermit’s address book…

Sorry Nicola.

EDIT: And Craig Charles’ ‘Captain Butler’ was somehow rendered as ‘Captain Blood’. But only Darrell noticed that one…