THE GRAUNIAD

The sharper of my legion of followers will have noticed that I usually refer to The Guardian as The Grauniad. 

This affectionate nickname was coined in the 1960s by the satirical magazine Private Eye. It originated to mock the newspaper's frequent typesetting errors and typos during the hot-metal printing era, a historical inside joke the paper itself acknowledges.

I subscribed to Lord Gnome's Organ back in the late 70's onwards, in the days of Richard Ingrams editing, and indeed the nurturing & coaching of a young Ian Hislop as his replacement. To me, the Guardian will always be The Grauniad. The Organ, in turn, was oft refered to as Etavirp yeee, or suchlike.

The Grauniad, to be fair, published this list of some of the best typos. I love the fact that they called Frightened Rabbit Frightened Rabbi, and the finance pages reported a £250,000 advance for Vikram Seth’s new novel, as “A Suitable Buy”.

I should be so purrrfect...