Telling porkies

I like a bad joke as much as the next person but there is a time and a place for them and perhaps a sombre Commons statement on the crisis in Libya is not the right occasion in which to crack a feeble and mildly offensive gag about sausages.

John Baron, the Conservative MP for Basildon and Billericay, rose in Parliament yesterday to ask William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, whether he thought it was ironic that we should send "a British warship [the HMS Cumberland] named after a pork sausage to rescue Brits from a Muslim country"?

Hague replied, witheringly, that "it was important to send the nearest royal naval ship available, irrespective of its name" and that the HMS York had also been there. "I hope he has no difficulty with that," Hague added.

Baron, not to be confused with the actor who played CJ in the original Reggie Perrin, is right that the HMS Cumberland has the nickname "the fighting sausage", although it was of course named after the English county and is the eleventh ship to carry the name, the first being in 1695.

If Baron was hoping to grab the news with his feeble gag then it has worked, on this blog at least, but is it really what he went into politics to achieve?