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Friday Funnies: The ultimate collection

With Christmas rapidly approaching, we thought we would take some time out from the daily grind at HTFP towers to look back at our favourite press and media funnies from 2009.

Thanks to you, our eagle-eyed readers, we’ve enjoyed gaffs galore, from comedy spelling errors to missing headlines, and we hope you have enjoyed reading them as much as we’ve enjoyed receiving them.

Now we are asking you to pick your favourite press funny from the last 12 months by taking part in our poll over at our companion blog The Journalism Hub. The poll will remain open for the next fortnight and we will publish the results here early in the New Year.

So scroll down to see, in chronological order, the ultimate Top Ten of 2009.

To check out all our previous Friday Funnies visit the main index. One final point – please keep them coming to [email protected]


It’s right back almost 12 months now to arguably the grimmest day of the year – 2 January – and our first Friday Funnies of 2009. We were instantly attracted to this Kenilworth Weekly News story with what one reader called something from the ‘No S**t Sherlock’ school of headline writing:


The high-profile world of Championship football will inevitably lead to media scrutiny and the Evening Telegraph didn’t hold back in its opinion of the ‘meassges’ on former Peterborough United player Leon McKenzie’s goal celebration T-shi(r)ts:


Some may opine that marriage really IS a death sentence so it’s a wonder what this long-in-love couple thought when they picked up the 29 April edition of the Western Daily Press:


This heart-warming summer tale from the BBC was definitely one for those of us with a less sophisticated sense of humour:

Needless to say the Beeb has since changed the headline on this…..BOOOOO!!!


Back to the football field now and Premiership club Aston Villa. Its star midfielder Gareth Barry had chosen his local daily to pen a personal letter to disgruntled fans explaining why he had chosen to move to Manchester City. The headline on the completely unrelated front page lead story seemed somehow apt though:


Swine flu stories have dominated the media for a large chunk of 2009 and nowhere was it more threatening (apparently) than in the London Borough of Hillingdon. The Uxbridge Gazette made sure its readers knew how to, in the words of that old nuclear war warning slogan, ‘prepare and survive':


The silly season was well and truly upon us when the Lichfield Mercury carried this heart-rending tale of a moggy who has gone to the great wicker basket in the skies….as its lead news story…..on its homepage…..for some considerable time:


The new ‘Local People’ sites in Devon ran this ad for budding musicians. Thankfully, radio’s status as an audio-only medium would have saved a severe bout of blushing and a letter from Ofcom to the studios of BBC Radio Devon:


Over to the national press and this headline faux pas from the Daily Express. It seems that during page changes over the course of one day’s different editions the words ‘finally’ and ‘at last’ became catastrophically combined:


Last but by no means least is this eye-catching A-board from the Welwyn and Hatfield Times. No further explanation necessary:

Now vote for your favourite here.