Penny Mordaunt’s ‘c*ck’ – is hijacking a speech ever wise?

Confessing your dare to a group of journalists at an awards ceremony is probably not the best way to keep it secret.

But Ms Mordaunt revealed this week she had inserted variations of the word “c*ck” into a Commons speech six times after a dare from her Royal Navy cohorts – she serves as a reservist.

She also used the words “lay” or “laid” five times during the speech she gave last year on the welfare of chickens, having received a forfeit in the Navy officers’ mess.

Officers’ mess

Some of her training officers tried to get her “to yell particular rude words during the most gruelling part of our training,” she was quoted as saying.

“‘They failed, but during our mess dinner at the end of the course, I was fined for a misdemeanour,” reported the Mail on Sunday.

“The fine was to say a particular word, an abbreviation of cockerel, several times during a speech on the floor of the Commons, and mention all the names of the officers present.”

Ms Mordaunt is hardly shy of using colourful language in her Commons speeches – in June she joked that one example of Royal Navy training did not offer a “bespoke” version for women.

“Fascinating though it was, I felt that the lecture and practical demonstration on how to care for the penis and testicles in the field failed to appreciate that some of us attending had been issued with the incorrect kit,” she told her fellow MPs.

Good to have a Member of Parliament & Minister in @PennyMordauntMP #PennyMordaunt with a sense of humour who doesn’t take herself seriously.

— CountyCllr John Wall (@CllrJohnWall) November 30, 2014

But her poultry-laden speech is another example of the temptation facing supposed pillars of the community when trying to liven up their public work.

The times are hardly changing

In September, a bizarre 17-year bet between Swedish academics was blown wide open when it emerged they had been sneaking Bob Dylan lyrics into their research articles.

Two of the five scientists, all of whom were fans of the US artist, started the whole thing off with their paper called “Nitric Oxide and Inflammation: The Answer Is Blowing In the Wind”.

Perhaps not the greatest example of syntactic wit, but followed up a few years later with another Dylan reference in a paper on the ability of non-neural cells to generate neurons – “Blood on the Tracks: A Simple Twist of Fate?” – which spurred a race between the academics to squeeze in the most Dylan references before retirement.

US lawmakers aren’t immune either, although their decision to use lyrics from Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up may raise eyebrows more for their cheesier choice of music.

In 2011, about a dozen state lawmakers in Oregon slipped in lyrics from Astley’s 1987 hit, but weren’t afraid of making the stunt obvious.

The reported mastermind of the bipartisan effort, Republican politician Jefferson Smith, said he wanted to attract more people to politics rather than push them away with partisan “venom”.

Is it beyond Ms Mordaunt to convince fellow MPs to pull a similar trick? Only time will tell…