Nadine Dorries' five hottest takes from her latest interview

No-one can accuse Nadine Dorries of mincing her words.

The culture secretary has developed quite the reputation for an unusual approach to communicating, taking part in car-crash interviews aplenty and showing apparent disdain for journalists asking her questions, with her unique take on politics has sparked memes, parodies and jokes on social media.

This weekend, she returned to face the media in an interview withthe Times and covered a range of subjects from what to do with the BBC, to calling one of her colleagues a "f***wit".

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Here are six of her spiciest takes from that interview:

"Wake up and smell the coffee".

A number of Tory MPs - so-called 'pork pie plotters' - have handed in letters of no confidence in the PM in the wake of the Partygate scandal, hoping to oust him and install a... perhaps more sedate leader.

Dorries has no time for these defectors. “They talk to themselves in the mirror each morning and tell themselves that actually, their role is to be prime minister,” she says. “Some of them have to wake up, smell the coffee and realise that some people are in parliament for a very long time before they become a minister, and the job is being a backbencher. That is the job.”

"I owe the PM my absolute undying loyalty."

Dorries has consistently defended the PM where others will not. She recently said the only way Johnson would lose her support is if he kicked a dog and has been rather combative when answering questions about how often they communicate.

In her latest interview, she was no different in drenching the PM with support. She said: “The prime minister gave me my job as a secretary of state, and for that, I owe him my absolute undying loyalty.”

“I called him a f***wit.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg reportedly once claimed that the reason there were so few working-class MPs was because working-class people did not know how to write letters.

In response, Dorries wrote a letter to him rightly criticising him for his words. “Didn’t you tell him to f*** off?” the Times asked. “Oh no, I called him a f***wit," she replied.

Fair play.

"The BBC is a polar bear on a shrinking ice cap".

Dorries' relationship with the BBC hasn't always been great - just look at her interview with Charlie Stayt. She froze the license fee in 2024 and has said future funding is "up for discussion", having in the past criticised some of its output. To The Times, she however acted as the broadcaster's saviour.

“Our responsibility is to save the BBC from itself because it is that polar bear on a shrinking ice cap,” she says. “It’s a global British brand, which must be protected.”

"Get that line in".

After offering her opinion on the BBC needing to be protected, she revealed a bit of a strange approach to how journalists scrutinise politicians when she said to the journalist writing the article: "If you could make sure you get that line in."

Yikes.

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