Andrew Adonis slaps down Jacob Rees-Mogg with penny-farthing joke

Former transport minister Andrew Adonis drew laughs at the Cambridge Union at the University of Cambridge last night with a bicycle-related joke at the expense of Tory backbench MP and Hardest of Hard Brexits cheerleader-in-chief, Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The MP for North East Somerset, whose whose demeanour, dress and opinions may lead some to wonder if HG Wells’ 1895 novella The Time Machine was rather more than a work of fiction, was pitted against the Labour peer in a debate titled “This house believes no deal is better than a bad deal.”

But as respective proposer and opponent of the motion, neither was eligible for a prize of a bicycle to be awarded to the best speaker from the floor on the evening, reports Bloomberg.

That prompted the following barb from Adonis: “We think we should be eligible and Jacob in particular wants to have the penny farthing if he wins.”

As it turned out, Rees-Mogg lost the debate … but if he fancies a spin on one of those new-fangled bicycles, he could always ask the Courtyard Coffee House and Penny Farthing Museum in Cheshire if he could borrow their recently-acquired ‘Hobby Horse’, believed to be Britain’s oldest bike and made 199 years ago.