On Saturday the 17th of April 2010 The Age newspaper published on the bottom of page 5 a small article titled "Hot Water over spelt check" (click top left image for an enlargement).

The article explains that the recipe book titled Pasta Bible by Penguin Group Australia had a spelling mistake where "freshly ground black people" was printed instead of "freshly ground black pepper".

It is unclear who or how many people complained about the mistake, but as a result, 7000 copies of the book have been pulped at a cost of $20,000 to the company. According to a quote in the article, existing copies in shops would apparently not be recalled.

That morning I tried to purchase a copy of the erroneous book and rang several stores around Melbourne. Angus & Robertson had pulled copies off the shelves and refused to sell them. The lady manager of the Southland store said head office had ordered removal of the book from shelves and she refused to sell me one. Suburban Dymocks stores had not withdrawn the book, but copies had sold rapidly in city and inner suburban stores. After ringing around for some time I eventually stumbled across a single available copy in the Mornington Dymocks store, so I had to spend an hour and a half driving there and back to obtain my precious copy of the erroneous Pasta Bible.

I rang a senior manager at the parent company of Angus & Robertson to complain about their withdrawal of the erroneous books from their shops. I claimed that the error was trivial and it was an obvious accident and the order from head office was an absurd overreaction. I also pointed out that the expression "black people" is very rarely heard in Australian culture. He said that the book could be construed as racist and in light of the publicity it had received he ordered the book withdrawn from sale. He had nothing else to say on the matter.

I am now attempting to find out how many complaints were received about the book and who received them. Rumours from a sales "rep" hint that a single complaint was received. If this is true, we have a textbook example of modern political correctness gone mad.

I fear that the Australian sense of humour is being destroyed by the new era of political correctness and the Amercianisation of our culture. Artists, publishers, musicians and comedians are living in constant fear of being perceived as politically incorrect, even in matters as trivial as this spelling mistake.

Click the images on the left to popup enlargements of the front cover and pages 78-79 of the Pasta Bible. The error can be seen on the top right of page 78.