how to stop ubuntu linux mailutils mail queue

we had some network problems here at the office so a bunch of error mails got queued to be sent to me and my colleague. it was annoying getting hundreds of irrelevant (because i had fixed the real problem already) error emails so i found out how to stop these queued messages from getting sent out every minute:

$ > /var/spool/mail/myuser
$ > /var/mail/myuser

this cleared the whole mail file so no more mails got sent out.

UPDATE. i was wrong, you need to delete the /var/spool/mqueue directory:

sudo rm -fdr /var/spool/mqueue

here's how to recreate it again with the correct permissions.