Australian Twitter users were left confused on Monday when writer Anne Summers “broke” the news that  72-year-old political author Mungo MacCallum had died. In fact, he’d simply gone out for coffee.

Tributes to the author began flooding in as high profile users, including ABC PM presenter Mark Colvin, confirmed that Mr MacCallum’s Wikipedia page also mentioned his death.

However, the rumours were quickly disproven when Mr MacCallum’s colleagues at The Echo reported that he was, in fact, alive and across the road having coffee.

Ms Summers retracted her initial tweet and apologised for the mishap.

Other corrections were posted under the hashtag “#MungoLives”.

And then the jokes began.