Letter: 'Mail' apology

Sir: Your report (1 June) about the damages The Mail on Sunday is to pay the actress Brooke Shields was way off the mark.

The actual figure is, of course, a confidential matter between Miss Shields and us but it is considerably less that the one you quoted.

Far from being "po-faced in the extreme" (whatever that means) we took urgent steps to correct our mistake as soon as we discovered we had been seriously misled by a source in France. As is usual for all newspapers, including The Independent, in such a case, part of the settlement is the publication of any apology in terms agreed with the complainant's lawyers, and this was what we published on Page Three. The Editor himself made the decision to publish a personal apology on the front page because, as he stated: "We were very wrong and, in this case, it is right we should say so prominently."

RUSSELL FORGHAM

Managing Editor

The Mail on Sunday

London W8