The editor of the British tabloid Daily Mirror was adamant that all babies look the same from the waist up.
But Piers Morgan's powers of physiognomy, however, did not prevent red faces all round when his newspaper welcomed the birth of Sir Paul and Heather Mills McCartney's baby girl with the
front page headline: "It's a boy".
The BBC, London's Evening Standard and a string of international news agencies picked up on the story and launched serious discussions on the pros and cons of the name "Joseph" as reported in the Mirror.
The mystery surrounding the gender of the baby, Beatrice Milly McCartney, born on Tuesday, was resolved only when the couple issued a formal statement.
"She is a little beauty and we couldn't be prouder," they said.
"Our immediate family were told the news right away and are all as overjoyed as we are at the early arrival of our little bundle of joy."
As the couple settled down to enjoy the arrival of their newborn daughter, questions were being asked and fingers pointed at media organisations in a somewhat redundant exercise of damage limitation.
"I suspect our tipster may have got an above-waist glimpse which may have caused confusion," Morgan said. "There's a lot of eggs on a lot of faces. The trouble with babies is that they can all look very similar. But it's a tiny blip on a great scoop."
The 3.1kg (7lb) baby girl, who was named after her maternal grandmother and Sir Paul's aunt, was born three weeks early by Caesarean section at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in St John's Wood - not far from Abbey Rd where the Beatles recorded numerous hits.
Beatrice is the first child of Lady McCartney, 35, but the fourth for the 61-year-old former Beatle, who had three children with his late wife Linda, as well as an adopted step-daughter.
It is not the first time that a long-awaited and hotly discussed celebrity birth has been the subject of a gender confusion.
When Victoria Beckham was pregnant with her second child, Britain was fully prepared to welcome a little girl, already known around the world as Paris. Newspapers were forced to backtrack when Mrs Beckham eventually gave birth to a 3.28kg (7lb 4oz) boy, named Romeo.
McCartney celebrated a double dose of good news - his earnings have now topped £40 million ($112.5 million) a year. He tops the latest Sunday Times Pay List as Britain's most affluent pop star.
McCartney's latest world tour, which ended in his hometown of Liverpool in June, proved a major money-spinner.
- INDEPENDENT
The editor of the British tabloid Daily Mirror was adamant that all babies look the same from the waist up.
But Piers Morgan's powers of physiognomy, however, did not prevent red faces all round when his newspaper welcomed the birth of Sir Paul and Heather Mills McCartney's baby girl with the
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.