A Manchester Evening News journalist's confession on how he missed the resignation of former City boss Kevin Keegan - because he left a night shift early - is just one of the stories being shared with readers as the paper prepares to move offices.

Sports sub Mike Whalley told of the night he "really, really cocked-up" in an entry in a 50-part blog called 'Tales from the Teapot'.

It has seen the sports desk's long-serving metal teapot 'pouring out' memories of some of the events it has witnessed during its time at Deansgate.

Written from the point of view of the teapot, Mike is 'ghost writing' the column and other sports desk colleagues are also sharing anecdotes.

He told readers of the night in question: "We newspaper people swap these stories of our own mistakes, smile ruefully, shake our heads and move on.

"Then I tell the story of my biggest-ever mistake, and even hardened hacks who have seen it all look at me wide-eyed and say: 'Wow, Mike. That's a bad one.'

"It happened just over two months after I joined the MEN. My job was to work the late-night shift, putting the finishing touches to the sports pages for the following morning's first edition.

"The deadline was 11pm; sometimes it could be incredibly hairy, especially if there were some evening football matches going on. Most nights, though, it was fairly quiet.

"This particular Thursday was one of those nights. There had been a UEFA Cup tie involving Middlesbrough that evening, and I needed to get a brief report into the paper. That was fairly straightforward, though, and by around 10.20pm, there was nothing left to do.

"I proof-read a few of the pages to pass a bit more time, corrected one or two mistakes, but time seemed to have stopped.

"By 10.45pm, I'd run out of pages to read. Even though there were still 15 minutes to go until the deadline, I figured that, since there was nothing left to do, I might as well go home. I drove back to my flat, watched a bit of the local football highlights show on TV, and went to bed.

"And no one would have ever been any the wiser, had something not happened between 10.45pm and 11pm. The next morning, my day off, I found out exactly what.

"I got a phone call around 9.30am from Peter Spencer, the sports editor. The tone of his voice was baffled rather than angry, but nowhere near as baffled as mine as the following conversation unravelled:

Peter: Hi Mike. I'm ringing to ask what went wrong last night.
Me: How do you mean?
Peter: Well, Kevin Keegan resigned as City boss last night, and I rang the office to get the deadline put back, and you weren't there.
Me: Erm...
Peter: We had to get people in to finish the paper off, and the editor wants to know why the late man wasn't in the office.
Me: Erm...

"I didn't really have an excuse, so I spent the next five minutes apologising, and the whole weekend wondering if I would still have a job come the Monday.

"I later found out that what had happened was this: I had gone home at around 10.45pm, and rumours that Kevin Keegan had resigned as Manchester City manager started to surface at around 10.50pm. Peter had called the office, only to discover I wasn't there.

"So what happened instead was that Peter called Chris Brierley, our deputy sports editor, who came back into the office and worked with Steve Howarth, the late night news sub-editor, to change the relevant pages so that the Keegan story did make it into that first edition. The readers would not have known that there had been a problem, thanks to Chris and Steve's amazing work.

"And me? Well, I did have to put up with Peter calling me 'Timex' for the next month. And I suppose I've got a good anecdote out of it as well. I can honestly say that I haven't left a shift early since. It'll be a long, long time before I forgive Kevin Keegan, though..."

Other tales shared on the blog include memories of when a few episodes of crime drama Cracker were filmed at the Deansgate offices, and how the newsroom reacted to news of the Hillborough disaster and the death of Princess Diana - the only time the MEN has been published on a Sunday.