DON’T panic, don’t panic! Southend’s oldest and biggest spelling mistake is finally being put out of its misery.

For 25 years, the Captain Mannering pub sign has stood as a local landmark in Campfield Road, Shoebury.

The pub was named as a tribute to one of British TV’s best-loved comic characters, the bossy and pompous Second World War Home Guard leader from Dad’s Army.

Fans of the programme will know the name of Arthur Lowe’s character is spelt Mainwaring, rather differently to the name on the pub sign.

Back in June 1984, the pub’s then owner, businessman Douglas Carroll, explained: “The name is pronounced Mannering on the show, and our signwriter wrote the name phonetically. I don’t think he’s a great Dad’s Army fan himself.”

Now new owner Marc Cane, 40, plans finally to set things right, though the pub name is likely the remain Shoebury’s famous spelling mistake.

An £80,000 revamp of the pub will see a change of name – but not to Captain Mainwaring.

In a move up the ranks from the amateur soldiers of the Home Guard, it is taking a name which reflect’s the area’s long links with the regular Army From now on, it will be known as the Garrison Arms, a tribute to the professional soldiery which occupied the Shoebury barracks for 153 years.

Mr Cane, who bought the pub in August 2008, said: “I’ve lived in Shoebury since I was seven, and knew it when it was still a garrison town.

“I thought calling it after a fictional, comical character was a bit unsuitable. It didn’t do justice to the men at Shoebury barracks, many of whom gave their lives in the wars.”

Mr Cane also wanted to reflect the building’s history. It was built in 1898 as a military hospital, paid for by public subscription, in memory of seven soldiers killed in an accidental explosion at the barracks in 1885.

However, it will take more than a revamp to uproot an old soldier from his billet, even a part time one.

“I had an offer for the old Captain Mannering pub sign,” Mr Cane revealed. “In the end, though, we couldn’t get it out of the frame.”

Instead, the new sign, depicting the famous garrison clock, will simply be fixed over Captain Mainwaring’s portrait.

And Mainwaring may have had the last laugh in another way, as Mr Cane explained: “I was talking to a regular at the pub and he didn’t realise that Mainwaring was even a fictional character at all.

“He thought he was a real war hero.”