We would like to apologise to our readers for the metaphysical knot we tied ourselves in earlier this year when reporting the end of the life of Sir Gregory Templeton Murphy, who, before he died, was regarded as the Greatest Living Philosopher.

As a matter of record we would like to make the following statement to the philosophy community, and keen amateurs, who have taken an unbelievable amount of effort to write in to us about our headline 'Greatest Living Philosopher Dies'

Yes, we know that the 'Greatest Living Philosopher' can never die. This is because, as soon as the person with the title 'Greatest Living Philosopher' dies, he is no longer a living philosopher. (As soon as this person dies then the title automatically goes on to the next best living philosopher until they die, and so on, ad infinitum.)

We would like to take this opportunity to blame a former employee of the New York Times, who has since left our employ, for this basic error in philosophical argument.

Our Head of Philosophy has successfully managed to confuse us enough that we now accept he cannot possibly be expected to resign his position over this issue.