A Nottingham hotel manageress who accidently hit "reply" instead of "forward" when dealing with a disgruntled punter's email complaint set a new standard in customer service - by calling him a "twat".

According to the Sun, Helen Key intended to forward Paul Whydall's claim for £100 compensation - duly submitted electronically after a waiter dispensed coke over him at the Colwick Hall Hotel - to her bosses. Instead, she replied to Whydall with the message: "Can you help me answer this twat please?"

Whydall, bless 'im, is reported to be "angry and upset". He has been offered compensation, but the hotel's proprieters have insisted that "twat" should have read "twot", as in "total waste of time".

Yeah, right. ®

Related stories

Workers get into email trouble
Emails that come back to haunt
One in five US firms have sacked workers for email abuse