What a stuff-up: The joke that should never have been printed.

Beer is better than women. A newspaper said so.

Women of Victoria’s western region were surprised to open their local newspapers this week and find a story titled “25 reasons why beer is better than women” in the TV Guide lift-out.

Many of the enlightened comparisons related to crass sex things, like:

“Beer is always wet.”

“If you pour a beer right you’ll always get good head.”

“You can enjoy a beer all month long.” (Because periods, geddit?)

And a couple borrowed from the ‘women as valueless inferiors’ line of thinking, including:

“Beer doesn’t demand equality.”

“After you’re finished with a beer the bottle is still worth five cents.”

Some of the local women (and some men) were pretty pissed off to discover the results of the appraisal.

I guess that’s what being compared to a beverage and being found to be the more lacking of the two will do to you.

So why, in 2015, did The Hamilton Spectator, The Portland Observer and Casterton News run this in their papers?

Simple. It was a stuff-up.

Richard Beks, publisher and managing director of The Hamilton Spectator, told Mamamia that the ‘tasteless’ joke ran in the newspapers by mistake and was causing a stir locally.

“It was sent in by a reader and somebody has blindly put the joke in without much consideration while the editor is away on holidays,” Mr Beks said.

He said the piece ran due to “human error” and it “should never have made it” into the paper.

An apology will be included in the next edition of the TV lift out, he said.

Awkward. Really awkward.