Even very clever politicians can fall foul of speech rules

Yes. I know about Joe Biden but who ever said he was clever? This is about the head of the British Conservative party, a graduate of Eton and Oxford:

"It was meant to be the ideal low-risk, softball interview before he headed off to France for his holidays. But yesterday David Cameron’s last media appearance before the summer break ended in awkward apologies after he used an inappropriate word during a breakfast radio programme favoured by his wife, Samantha.

The Tory leader used the word “twat” as he explained to Christian O’Connell, a presenter on Absolute Radio, why he did not use the Twitter social networking service. “The trouble with Twitter, the instantness of it — too many twits might make a twat,” he said. In the studio his remark was greeted with laughter. Mr O’Connell said: “That’s fantastic.”

However, according to the Collins English Dictionary, the word can refer to female genitals, a girl or woman “considered sexually”, or a foolish or despicable person. Shortly afterwards Mr Cameron risked making the situation worse by saying people were “pissed off” with politicians — although he added hastily: “Sorry, I can’t say that in the morning.” ...

According to Mr O’Connell, the Conservative leader was ticked off by Gabby Bertin, his press secretary, as he left the studio. The presenter described the exchange between Mr Cameron and Ms Bertin in a podcast released shortly after the broadcast. “She leapt out of her skin after the first part of the interview,” the presenter said. “He said [to her] ‘That seemed to go OK’. She said, ‘Yeah, apart from the language’.

“He said ‘Oh, yeah, pissed, sorry about that, I’m really sorry’ . . . She said ‘No, it was the twat’. “He said, ‘That’s not a swearword’. I think he must be posh, where a lot of them don’t think twat is a swearword. His press secretary went, ‘It is’.”

The presenter hailed Cameron as “a good bloke” who had been as relaxed as if he were “down the boozer”. Mr O’Connell joked that the t-word was not viewed too seriously by radio regulators: “In terms of the fines we can get, it is not one of the big ones.”

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