Surely Colin Murray can't have been the smart one?

Edith Bowman has apologised for a bit of a major balls-up on Radio One yesterday afternoon, where she read out an email calling Japanese people 'nips'. She claimed - somewhat implausibly - that she didn't know the term was offensive:

Radio 1 said Bowman had "read this particular term out in error" and that "no offence was intended".

Bowman's apology came half an hour after the email was read out.

"Sometimes people say things that might be a derogatory term, but if you're not aware of it you don't know," she said.

"Apologies if there's been anything that's offended anyone this afternoon."

We're not sure this quite makes sense - she must have understood the word was being used to refer to Japanese people, otherwise the "joke" it was built in to wouldn't have made any sense; and is it plausible to be aware of the term and yet not know that it was derogatory?

More to the point, since the humorous suggestion she was reading out was that it would be a good idea to call cold weather "Pearl Harbour", there's as big a question over if it's appropriate to make jokes about the in-living-memory slaughter of a couple of thousand people anyway?

music edith bowman bbc radio one