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WWe’ve all done it, haven’t we? I mean, I accidentally sent a message to someone who wasn’t the intended recipient. An “I love you” to the WhatsApp group; a sexy picture for your parents; a graphical description of all the ways you want to quit your job, right in your boss’s inbox.

Of course, if many of us send a message incorrectly, we are not a BBC presenter preparing for an important interview. And even fewer of us are former prime ministers of the UK and Great Britain. And the intended communication rarely, if ever, consists of a series of interview questions aimed at exposing the former prime minister’s controversial career.

This is why it was so unfortunate that the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg accidentally sent her briefing notes to Boris Johnson, resulting in a planned interview with the former prime minister being canceled the night before.

Kuenssberg wrote about the faux pas on Twitter/X: “While preparing for tomorrow’s interview with Boris Johnson, I accidentally sent him our briefing notes in a message intended for my team. Of course, this means that it is not right to continue the interview.

“It is very frustrating and there is no point in pretending it is anything other than embarrassing and disappointing as there are many important questions that need to be asked.” But red faces aside, honesty is the best policy. See you on Sunday.”

As easy as it is to mock the presenter, who earns £325,000 a year, for making a mistake that an unpaid intern would probably be fired for, it’s understandable (to a point). As I said, who among us hasn’t embarrassed ourselves at some point by introducing the wrong person into an email or text thread?

I know I have it. More than once, I’ve sent an “I love you” message to a WhatsApp group made up entirely of the very people I don’t want to know that I’m capable of affection. And when I say “an ‘I love you’ message,” I don’t mean I sent the words “I love you” — I sent the kind of cheesy, cutesy, over-the-top communication that you really only send to someone someone you’ve been in a relationship with for over a decade – think “I blew you away” on steroids. There were nicknames. There was a slang we invented. There were so many emojis.

But compared to some other stories I’ve heard, this is pretty lame. One person told me that when she woke up to a few flirty text messages from a coworker, she wanted to forward them to a friend to show him how desperate he was. However, instead of forwarding it to her friend, she sent it straight back to the man along with the message “I do the guy’s name to leave me alone.” Apparently she excused herself by telling him she was joking, but I think the poor guy was just willing to climb onto any life raft that came along to save his dignity. He believed her.

Another said they screenshotted the profile picture of a girl he liked so he could send it to a friend and presumably talk about how much he appreciated her intelligence. Luckily, he was punished for his hubris when he sent it to the girl instead, to which she responded with “????????” – the death knell for any budding flirting relationship. (I’ve since been told that the only way out of this situation is to pretend you want to send it by saying, “That’s a great picture of you!” but even then there’s only a 50/ 50 chance that it won’t work seems like a horror).

One said that shortly after kissing a beautiful woman, he texted that beautiful woman, “OH MY GOD I JUST KISSED.” BEAUTIFUL WOMANCAN YOU BELIEVE IT???” It’s a rare example of an unintentional text message potentially working to one’s advantage – apparently this beautiful woman took my boyfriend’s enthusiasm as a compliment and was very open to kissing him again.

And then there’s this classic from another friend. The Mona Lisa about accidental messages: “I accidentally sent a picture of myself naked on the toilet to the workgroup chat.” Pure poetry.

Something like this can hardly be avoided. When I personally want to talk about one of my friends or send something exciting, I check four times to make sure I’m in the right chat. Even then, I don’t fully trust myself and check three or four times after sending the message to make sure it hasn’t gone to the wrong person.

It’s a frightening process that often leads to disaster, but what else should I do? Not Send stressful messages or talk about people behind their backs? Let’s be realistic here. It’s only half the fun of owning a phone.

But the next time you tell your friends you love them, or accidentally disparage your date right to your date’s face, just take solace in the fact that you didn’t have to turn down an interview with a former world leader because of it.