Every so often, even the most careful of bloggers screws up, as I did yesterday. I wrote a long and pretty nasty piece about Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, based largely on the very strong impression I’d gained over the years that at some point or another he’d been a GP.

Comment threader ‘MP’ then rightly pointed out this was completely false, and so I’ve taken down the piece (*SEE UPDATE BELOW).   However, just as on Millionaire, contestants are never quite sure ‘why or how’ they know something, it never occurred to me that Lansley wasn’t a medical professional. Wondering why that might be, I’ve rung several chums over the last twelve hours, and guess what? 9 out of 14 thought he’d been a medic in some capacity.

So I trawled through  his speeches last night (because I’m very sad, having only 14 friends) and it is hard to avoid the conclusion from some of them that he has extensive medical knowledge. (His father did, but Lansley doesn’t.) Another friend said on the phone last night, “Somehow, I seem to recall a Party political broadcast saying he had ‘hands-on NHS experience'”. He did memorably promise in June last year that he would ‘take a knife to’ the NHS, so perhaps that sort of analogy had some effect too.

Anyway, there you go: I was wrong, and that’s that. ‘MP’ says he is glad Lansley is Health Secretary and not me, as am I. But lest we forget, the point of the piece was to show that Andrew Lansley had approved three-parent babies with little or no thought for the consequences: and frankly, whether he used to be a Red Arrow or a witch doctor, the criticism remains valid.

By the way ‘MP’, your assumption that I don’t have hands-on experience of doctors is equally false. Over the years I have wanted to strangle a great many of them. I’m glad to set the record straight on that one.

(* UPDATE: Not satisfied with my decision to take down the original Lansley post, MP has since commented again.My response can be seen if you scroll down).