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There were a few instances in which "institutional racism" was incorrectly substituted for "institutional prejudice", and one or two candidates made the bad mistake of saying that the specially trained officers dealing with crime complaints from the gays were gay themselves.

Awkward phrases in the copy included "a pair of youths" (for the two culprits) and "a pair of couples" (the two couples who saw the latest attack as they were leaving a restaurant).

The use of apostrophes continues to puzzle some trainees, who either ignore them completely as if they were redundant or scatter them about in the hope that some of them will land in the right place. The most frequent mistake this time was in turning Oxdown Gay Persons' Community into a one member organisation (Oxdown Gay Person's), although the title was clearly printed in the brief.

As usual, it was evident that some candidates did not allow themselves enough time to check their copy for spelling errors or keyboarding mistakes.

Superintendent Maguire would certainly have wondered why several candidates changed his or her first name - and consequently his or her sex - from Leslie to Lesley, or vice versa.

Some candidates got the location of the latest attack wrong (it was in the High Street, not outside the Picket Lane cafe frequented by gays), and misspellings of Picket Lane included Pickets and Pickett.

One candidate had the attackers "praying" on the gays in the town centre, as if they were some sort of evangelists.

Another candidate even mistyped "soldiers" for "shoulders" in a quote attributed to the eye-witness: "One of the men was holding the man round the soldiers." In other words, as the marker noted - round his privates!

But the rough treatment was not confined to the town centre. One candidate wrote:
"He was taken to St Mary's Hospital by ambulance and was discharged yesterday with a broken nose, cuts and bruises."

Clearly a casualty department to avoid.

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