Richard Madeley left viewers cringing after asking Sir Keir Starmer if his deputy Angela Rayner was still his “best girl” on Monday.
Richard was questioning the Labour leader on Good Morning Britain over recent newspaper reports that Angela was being pushed out of the spotlight after calling the government “Tory scum” in September – a moment Sir Keir allegedly found “embarrassing”.
Angela has not been carrying out many interviews in the weeks since.
Yet the leader of the opposition replied: “That’s not true – every Sunday I get all of the newspapers and I faithfully go through them and read lots of things that bear no relation to the truth.”
Richard asked: “So she’s still your best girl is she?”
Sir Keir continued: “What I would say in all seriousness is that Angela Rayner has had a bereavement of someone very close to her, as someone she treated as more or less as her mother.
“She’s had a very hard week – and she’s got a funeral coming up in relation to that.
“Her absence is actually to do with that bereavement rather than anything else.
“But as I say, I enjoy reading the papers and hearing all sorts of stories that bear no relation to the truth.”
Jack McKenna, head of communications for Angela, expressed his frustration at Richard’s decision to call the deputy Labour leader a “best girl”.
He corrected Richard on Twitter, writing: ”*woman, **most senior woman in the Labour Party, ***elected with her own mandate.”
GMB viewers also took to Twitter to call out Richard for calling an elected public figure a “girl”...
Plenty of people also pointed out that Richard had once again embodied Steve Coogan’s fictional character Alan Partridge, who is renowned for making embarrassing clangers on live TV...