The Guardian’s amusing misidentification of Margaret Thatcher pic

An archive photo showed a famous woman — aproned, holding a saucepan and contemplating several wine glasses — in a galley kitchen (Ironing lady, 30 December, page 10). Our caption read: “Margaret Thatcher, as PM, attends to domestic concerns at 10 Downing Street.” In fact, notes a reader, “the photo shows almost the opposite: it’s a publicity still from a BBC TV series called ‘Take Nobody’s Word For It. ‘ ” The reader, who worked on this 1987 series, goes on: “Mrs Thatcher is appearing as a ‘guest scientist’ doing kitchen chemistry experiments; she’s explaining that red cabbage can be used as an indicator for acid and alkali, and she’s about to pour the red cabbage water from the saucepan . . . into the wine glasses with acid, alkali and neutral liquids in them, to show the colour changes.”