Voices: Just like Miriam Margolyes, Jeremy Hunt is going to do what he wants

It is a statement of fact that Jeremy Hunt has been called a “c***” live on the BBC no fewer than six times, so the brand new chancellor cannot say he was unprepared for what would happen to him on the Today programme on Saturday morning.

It would be impossible to decipher, in these chaotic times, which particular butterfly it was that flapped its wings at which particular time, and in so doing propelled a nice, polite, former head boy at Charterhouse to be sitting in his suit and tie, at 8.30 on a Saturday morning and being told four short words, live on national radio: “F*** you, you ba****d.”

How far back do you go? It probably wouldn’t have happened without Nigel Farage. It definitely wouldn’t have happened without that bat and that pangolin in that Wuhan meat market. Nor would it have happened without that cheese and wine party that didn’t happen.

It also required the sad death of Robbie Coltrane, the specific news event that had compelled BBC Today programme producers, perhaps against their better judgement, to call up Miriam Margolyes and ask her to pay tribute to her former friend.

I don’t think I can recall any broadcast appearance with Ms Margolyes in the last decade in which the F-bomb or indeed worse has not been dropped, so it is not entirely clear what they were expecting. These things are always set up in something of a rush, so they probably were not aware that she is also considered to be the first person ever to say “f***” on the BBC, having failed to answer a question correctly while representing Newnham College Cambridge as a contestant on University Challenge in 1963. (She is now, for the time being at least, both the first and last.)

It was a heartwarming interview, rendered only slightly odd by a lengthy diversion into the never less than treacherous area of JK Rowling and trans rights, a consequence to Coltrane’s role as Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies.

But she saved her best for last. Pictures of the BBC studio show Jeremy Hunt sitting politely in a pressed white shirt and a nice red tie, doing his first round of interviews as the nation’s new chancellor. Said interviews have been well received. He’s made clear that taxes will have to rise and public spending will have to be cut – the sort of thing that will calm the markets, precisely because they reveal Liz Truss to have given up on her mad ambitions.

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There does not, sadly, appear to be any footage of his reaction, as Miriam Margolyes breezily confides in Justin Webb: “The thing is when I saw him there I just said to him, ‘You’ve got a hell of a job. Good luck!’ But what I really wanted to say is ‘F*** you, you ba****d.’ but of course you can’t can you.”

Erm, no. You kind of can’t. On the subject of flapping wings, what followed was something of a montage of the BBC’s most unflappable stars having been rendered somewhat flappable. Martha Kearney could only politely announce that, “We’re going to have to get you out of the studio now.”

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She then threw live to Claire Balding, standing by from St James’s Park, Newcastle, ready to go with a set piece about the Rugby League World Cup but who appeared to have not yet finished spitting her tea out in shock.

There would later follow a tremendous piece of linkage from Justin Webb, a dedicated rugby fan who is used to hearing commentators apologise, “For anything you might have just seen or heard.” And here he was, finding himself having to do the same.

Arguably the bigger news is that Hunt made clear in his series of morning media interviews that the prime minister’s entire tax cutting “growth” agenda has been abandoned, that he is going to do exactly what he wants, and it’s going to be exactly what Liz Truss and her swivel-eyed fan club do not want. So in that sense, it was a dream start. He can certainly be expected to be called a lot worse by his brand new next door neighbour.