Years ago when I worked for the newspaper, we had the dubious duty of writing headlines for the various articles our co-reporters wrote in our section. I wasn't particularly good at it since I could never think of anything "catchy" on the spot.
But one particular day, we were running a business "close-up" story about a local septic cleaning business called Bailey, and I was watching my co-reporter try to headline it.
Well, being that we were the business section and ran lots of stories on businesses....and that there was a jewelry chain in our local mall called Bailey, Banks, & Biddle, I suggested the pun-filled "Bailey Banks on Piddle" on a whim. We had a great laugh about the pun and then went back to thinking of a real headline.
The managing editor instantly LOVED it and told us to run it....much to my chagrin.
I begged my co-reporter -- who was acting as editor while our boss was on vacation -- to pull it since I wasn't sure either business -- or our own editor -- would find it so funny.
He agreed but not in time to stop it from running in the morning edition.
We were biting our fingernails, hoping our editor didn't see it while reading his newspaper at home on vacation.
He didn't.
Fortunately, he subscribed to the afternoon edition...and so saw the story with the boring, pun-less headline.
I don't remember if we ever shared the original with him when he got back from vacation....
It doesn't always pay to be clever.
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