You might remember that last month the government had some very important advice for anyone playing Poohsticks.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport swiftly deleted it after being roundly mocked.
Silly mistake on our part on the #PoohSticks tweet - we didn't mean for it to be posted. Apologies all.
Now BuzzFeed News has got hold of the official government memo setting out the damage limitation exercise that followed. The golden rule: Say nothing.
The email, with the subject "Line on Twitter incident", appears to warn culture minister Ed Vaizey that he might get doorstepped by journalists about the tweet.
The message, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, was sent to Carrie Symonds, special adviser to culture secretary John Whittingdale, and Tracy Lee, head of news at DCMS, among other people whose names have been redacted.
The name of the person who sent the email – just over an hour after the Poohsticks incident on 27 August – has also been redacted. It reads:
All
So you are aware, a tweet about pooh sticks was posted in error today on the DCMS Twitter account. It's been picked up widely.
If any journos call/stop ministers we are pointing them only to the tweet we put up as a response (see below). We are not going further than it was a mistake.
I know Carrie is with SoS but [redacted] FYI for Ed while he is out and about in Edinburgh. The tweets were taken down and our response posted very quickly.
Any questions please feel free to call me on either of my mobiles [redacted].
Thanks
[redacted].
Vaizey was in Scotland for the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival at the time.
Whittingdale (aka SoS or secretary of state) had spoken at the same event the day before. The email reveals just how nervous civil servants were about the rogue tweet becoming news.
DCMS had suffered a backlash on Twitter over the "politically correct" tweet. One person replied "what is this crap" while another joked: "Please help, I have been injured due to unclear poohsticks instructions."
Poohsticks, a game that involves dropping sticks off a bridge, had been in the news because an engineer had come up with a special formula to help people play it.
The game was created by Winnie the Pooh in AA Milne's book The House at Pooh Corner. Players each drop a twig into the river and then cross to the downstream side of the bridge to see whose emerges first.