AWAY from home for a wildlife shoot, under the relentless glare of the Namibian sun, Benedetta Pinelli's patience was running out. Pinelli, editor of Lorraine Kelly's GMTV show, LK Today, was becoming increasingly angry at Ms Kelly's views over the camera angles, which differed greatly to her own.

Unable to bitch about her boss over the phone to her husband, for fear of being overheard by the camera crew, she adopted stealthier methods in order to vent her frustration.

Her fingers flew across the phone as she hammered out a text message, reportedly saying: "My God, I have really got the hump. I have just had this massive bust up with LK. It happened today. She's a nightmare to work with. I hate her."

Unfortunately for her, Ms Kelly appeared to have been on her mind too much. For instead of sending it to her husband, she sent it to Ms Kelly. And within minutes of realising her error, Ms Pinelli had contacted her office in London and resigned.

Yesterday, an assistant at MP Dari Taylor's Stockton office will have known exactly how she felt - the dry throat, perhaps a sweat break-out, followed by waves of nausea coming from the pit of the stomach - as the dawning realisation hits that you've sent it to the WRONG person. Not just any wrong person, but the person you were actually talking about in your email. Aaarrrrrrgh!

The world of instant communication means we can send a message by email or text to more than one person at the same time. We can bash out a letter with our fingers flying and hit send, for it to land in someone's mailbox at the other side of the world within seconds.

We can have flirty email or text ping-pong, one liners sent back and forth across cyber space faster than a serve by Andy Roddick. Or, as Ms Pinelli can testify, it can be a quick rant about a boss or an annoying work colleague.

In our world of fast living, it is our way of making fast contact. But make the errors and you can end up living with the fall-out for a long time. A very long time.

No one knows that more than the former political advisor (more commonly known as a spin doctor) to Stephen Byers, Jo Moore. Although she didn't send her email by mistake, she will have felt the same mortification when her private correspondence made its way into the pages of a national newspaper - and went on to cause an utter furore.

Ms Moore sent her email to Alun Evans, the transport department's head of information, within half an hour of the second plane hitting the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001.

"It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury," she reportedly wrote. As it pinged its way to Mr Evans, she probably instantly forgot about it. But the email ended up costing her job, and that of the department's press chief, Martin Sixsmith.

Other hastily sent emails and texts have had equally calamitous results.

An electronics student from Norwich wound up in court after emailing a pornographic picture of a couple having sex to his friend - and accidentally copying in everyone at his college whose surname began with a 'C'. The college's head of IT copied the image on to a disk and took it to the police, who later charged him with publishing an indecent image. After being fined £200 and ordered to pay £80 costs, the emailer quit his electronics course.

But while it's easy to send a message to the wrong person, there are times you have to remember that Big Brother is watching too, from employers to the police. In the case of Mike Devine, a member of a Clash tribute band, the music lyrics he sent to his band's lead singer almost got him in Big Bovver when he found Special Branch officers on his doorstep.

According to a national newspaper, Mr Devine wrote: "How about this for Tommy Gun? OK - So let's agree about the price and make it one jet airliner and ten prisoners."

The police maintained that Mr Devine had sent the text to a woman in Bristol by mistake who, in turn, had forwarded it to the police. But he was never sure. A terrorist expert later pointed out that the message was likely to have been picked up by staff at GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), which has been known to monitor vocal and textual mobile phone traffic.

"It hadn't even occurred to me that it might look a bit dodgy," a bemused Mr Devine said at the time.

But even if you send a bitchy email to the right friend/colleague, who's to say that they will simply read it and delete it?

Claire Swires, who worked for a London law firm, faced world-wide humiliation after sending an email to her boyfriend describing one of their sexual encounters as "yummy". Gentleman that he was, he forwarded it on to six of his friends...who forwarded it on to six of their friends... Pretty soon it had gone as far as China.

Meanwhile, City worker Trevor Luxton, found himself the target of a female hate campaign after boasting about his alleged sexual exploits with a friend's ex-girlfriend while he was on the phone to his fiancee. He sent the message to a few mates, only for it to end up around the world, with some female writers typing "let's get this b*****d" and "I hope his fiancee dumps him" into the subject header.

Sending text messages or emails by mistake has happened to many of us - 40 per cent according to one phone company's survey. It has even happened to our esteemed editor, Peter Barron, who once mistakenly sent a text intended for his daughter, who was away on a school trip, to Darlington's MP Alan Milburn. "MISS YOU xxx", he wrote. Unsurprisingly, Mr Milburn wasn't feeling reciprocal.

Which brings us to how you deal with the dreaded moment when you find you've sent it to the wrong person. In desperation, Trevor Luxton said that he had made up the story of his sexual exploits, but no one believed him, and by then the damage was done. He was forced to resign.

Putting your hand up and apologising quickly does seem to be the best way of dealing with it. A colleague says that when she accidentally sent a text to the person she was bitching about, she rang them straight away and apologised. "He was okay about it and he never mentioned it again," she says.

Others, like Benedetta Pinelli, go a step further and resign. But overall, if you want to avoid getting in the position where you need to apologise, then think before you press send. Check who you're sending the message to and that you haven't hit 'reply to all'. And if you really don't want to get caught out, then don't say anything that you wouldn't say to people's faces. At least, save the bitching for gossipy moments when you meet for, as many have found to their cost, email in haste, repent at leisure.