We claimed
in two articles in The smoking issue of G2 on May 14 that the health
secretary, Patricia Hewitt, had said it had been "deplorable" that Faye
Turney, one of the navy hostages held in Iran, had been shown on
television smoking a cigarette because "This sends out completely the
wrong message to our young people." In fact the quote was a fabrication
published in the Sunday Telegraph on April Fools' day. That paper
subsequently apologised for the unintended publication of the statement
in other papers as being genuine, as did the Times, and so do we (Is
the ban a good idea? No, page 6, G2, and Filthy habit, page 28, G2). Link
This is the original Sunday Telegraph story with the prank quote and it has still not been corrected online, though the writer did publish an apology in his subsequent column.
