BBC Radio 4 presenter Martha Kearney said ‘s***’ live on air before 7am today.
It came a day after Mishal Husain said the swear word seven times in under a minute as she was grilling Home Secretary James Cleverly over his language.
On Wednesday’s R4 Today show, Kearney reported on Husain’s interview and said the word ‘s***’ once.
Today, Kearney said the interview had made the news, to which Husain replied: ‘Guilty as charged, but I didn’t intend to say that word as many times.’
Kearney said: ‘The word ‘s***” seven times in less than a minute during an interview. It’s quite a record.’
Hussain said: ‘Martha, I can’t believe you’ve gone there again this morning.’
BBC Radio 4 presenter Martha Kearney (pictured) said ‘s***’ live on air before 7am
Mishal Husain said the word ‘s**t’ seven times over the course of a minute this morning as she grilled Home Secretary James Cleverly
Cleverly has said he does not recognise claims that he had described the Rwanda policy as ‘bats**t’.
He has also denied calling Labour MP Alex Cunningham’s Stockton North constituency a ‘s**thole’, insisting he actually called the politician ‘a s**t’.
Questioning the Tory minister yesterday, Husain mentioned ‘the time it was reported that you called a government policy bats**t’ and ‘the person or place you referred to in Parliament as a s**thole’.
‘No I didn’t,’ Cleverly said.
‘You didn’t use the word s**thole in Parliament?’ Husain said.
‘No, I absolutely didn’t.’
‘You didn’t use the word s**thole in Parliament?’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘So when you were picked up on a microphone who was talking, who said the word in Parliament?’
Cleverly said Husain ‘needed to do better research’ and that he was referring to ‘an individual’.
‘You used the word s**t didn’t you?’ Husain replied.
‘Yes I did, but the point is what you just accused me of is very very different and completely wrong,’ Cleverly said.
‘Ok, you say that you did say that a person was a s**t. Other people heard different things,’ Husain said.
This angered the Home Secretary, who insisted he had ‘just clarified’ what he actually said.
‘Other people say you said s**hole, you say you said s**t,’ Husain said.
‘No, other people can only hear what I said, I know what I said,’ Cleverly said.
‘And other people heard something else.’
‘No they didn’t, they couldn’t have, because I only heard one thing. That’s not how science works.’
He was accused of making the comments at a session of Prime Minister’s Questions in November.
Afterwards, he apologised for saying that the Labour veteran was a ‘s**t MP’ but denied being rude about his constituency.
Cleverly has denied calling Labour MP Alex Cunningham’s Stockton North a ‘s**thole’, insisting he actually called the politician ‘a s**t’
However, his apology did not come before Lord Houchen, the Tory mayor of nearby Teesside, had waded into the row.
And it even reached the Prime Minister’s door, with his spokesman confirming he retained full confidence in his Home Secretary less than a fortnight after he was appointed.
The BBC allows swearing when ‘editorially justified’. It is likely the word ‘s**t’ was considered tolerable by the corporation because it was quoting a politician in a story where his choice of language was an issue of controversy.
It is also not a word that is particularly offensive given it has no sexual, racial or religious connotations.
Ofcom ranks ‘s**t’ as ‘medium’ in terms of its level of offensiveness. This means it is ‘potentially unacceptable’ before the 9pm TV watershed. However, the watershed does not apply to radio.
Cleverly had earlier been forced to address claims he described the Rwanda policy as ‘bats**t’.
In his previous role as foreign secretary, he was partly responsible for overseeing negotiations with countries potentially willing to accept asylum seekers from Britain.
But sources claimed his opposition to the scheme stymied progress in securing deals.
Cleverly said he ‘did not recognise’ claims.
He found himself in hot water again late last year for a bad taste joke about using date-rape drug Rohypnol on his wife.
He faced calls to quit for telling female guests at a Downing Street reception that ‘a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night’ was ‘not really illegal if it’s only a little bit’.
He also joked that the secret to a long marriage was ensuring your spouse was ‘someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realise there are better men out there’.
Cleverly today told the BBC that he had issued a ‘heartfelt’ apology for the ‘bad joke’.
The Tory MP is a former British Army officer and has a history of swearing like a trooper.
In 2010, when he was a member of the London Assembly, Cleverly lashed out at Lib Dem deputy leader Simon Hughes.
The Home Secretary found himself in hot water again late last year for a bad taste joke about using date-rape drug Rohypnol on his wife Susie
Hughes, the then MP for Bermondsey in south London, was not the biggest fan of his party’s link-up with the Tories in the coalition government under David (now Lord) Cameron and Nick Clegg.
And Cleverly, who represented Bexley and Bromley at the time, took aim at what he saw as efforts to undermine it.
He tweeted: ‘We may be coalition partners but it doesn’t stop me thinking Simon Hughes is a d**k.’
But he also expanded on why in a blogpost still available online, branding Hughes’ a ‘fool’ for suggesting Lib Dem backbenchers get a veto over government business.
‘Simon Hughes clearly feels that he is the ”real” voice of the Lib Dems, (but) he isn’t’, Cleverly wrote.
‘He may well reflect the views of a number of Lib Dem MPs who haven’t reconciled themselves to the fact that coalition means compromise. But, as I have said before, a Lib Dem who isn’t prepared to enter a coalition with anyone except Labour isn’t a Lib Dem. They’re Labour…
‘It seems that most Lib Dems understand that there is a tricky balance to be struck, that there is important work to be done and, while this isn’t the best position for each of the coalition parties, we need to dig in and work together.
‘If Hughes feels it impossible to work with the Conservatives and his own front bench Lib Dem colleagues why not just bugger off to Labour and let the serious politicians get on with it?’