The BBC have said that an "unfortunate error" caused subtitles to give the football team Newscastle United a surprising nickname. Spotted by football writer, Paul Brown, the captions on Newcastle's game against Liverpool on Sunday called the premier league side "black and white scum".

According to the BBC, software used for the subtitling had confused the word 'comma', which had been said by a subtitler, with the word 'scum'. During the commentary, Guy Mowbray had in fact said "For the Reds against the black and whites, he boasts five goals in five appearances" while talking about Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge's record against the team.

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A BBC spokesperson, quoted by the BBC website, said: "Our live subtitling service is normally very accurate and makes our content much more accessible, but there are times when unfortunate errors occur." adding, "on this occasion the error was spotted and corrected immediately."

The match itself ended in a 1-1 draw with goals from Liverpool's Coutinho and Newcastle's Joselu.

People on Twitter had fun with the mistake, with one noting another subtitling error from the BBC from 2014 when a presenter saying "Welcome to the year of the horse", referencing the Chinese new year, was rendered as "Welcome to the year of the whores".

Others joked that the mistake was another definite example of the BBC's southern bias while some users suggested that the subtitler was a Sunderland fan, in reference to the north east Tyne-Wear derby between the rival clubs.

Newcastle united Liverpool FC Premier League