Matthew Hancock, once a key follower of David Cameron's, has been having a strange day at Radio Festival 2016.

Hancock, once George Osborne's chief of staff, and now a minister in the department of culture, media and sport, was delivering his first ever speech on radio to the Radio Academy in London, as he tweeted:

A problem with the autocue led the new minister for 'digital and culture' to be faced with two very different words throughout the speech, which had been on the screen for the previous panel.

These words were:

c*** gobbler

We imagine his thoughts were somewhat along these lines:

'What the...is this... Remember Matthew, it's radio, nobody can see your face.'

Not swayed by the distraction, Hancock soldiered on through his speech about the government's position.

At the end, he apologised to the audience if he had seemed 'distracted', and he explained the presence of the rude words directly in his eyeline.

The audio of this moment was tweeted by Daily Telegraph correspondent Patrick Foster:

The fact only an audio record of this was captured makes it all sound like a clever stunt by the Radio Festival, to highlight the continuing value of radio.

But then again, they probably wouldn't have chosen the words 'c***' and 'gobbler' to illustrate this point.

Looking for kudos, Hancock said

I have managed to do a whole speech without being distracted.

The presence of the two words was apparently caused by a 'malfunction'. This sounds awfully familiar to the 'malfunction' that conveniently wipes your history for exactly the last hour.

Hancock laughed it off, but what's strange is that at least one attendee seemed to think this event was 'Classic Radfest' banter.

Maybe Radfest is the new Burning Man and we're all just fools.