The 81-year-old actress said she wanted to tell Jeremy Hunt – who was appointed by Prime Minister Liz Truss to replace Kwarsi Kwarteng – “Fuck you, bastard” after his appearance on BBC Radio 4 just a day after his appointment into the position.

British-Australian actress Miriam Margolyes shocked listeners live on air on Saturday during BBC’s Today programme by using explicit language while discussing UK’s new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, causing Presenters Justin Webb and Martha Kearney to apologise to their audience.

The 81-year-old actress said she wanted to tell Jeremy Hunt – who was appointed by Prime Minister Liz Truss to replace Kwarsi Kwarteng – “Fuck you, bastard” after his appearance on BBC Radio 4 just a day after his appointment into the position.

The actress, speaking on the programme at the end of an interview about Robbie Coltrane’s death, told the presenters that she had greeted Hunt – who had just been interviewed on the morning’s programme before her.

Margolyes said she had wished him luck, but had wanted to tell him to go away in explicit language.

In her words: “When I saw him [Hunt] there, I just said: ‘What a hell of a job, the best of luck.’ And what I really wanted to say was ‘Fuck you, bastard,’ but you can’t say that.”

Webb, who quickly apologised for the language, said: “Oh, no, no, no, you mustn’t say that. No, you can’t say that! We’ll have to have you out of the studio now,” with Kearney adding: “We will, with many apologies.”

Margolyes, who played Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films and who had been paying tribute to late Coltrane – a fellow Potter star who died on Friday aged 72, later told the programme’s producers she had mistakenly believed she was off air.

Webb had later apologised saying: “When I watched the Rugby on BT Sport they always apologised when you hear words that you possibly shouldn't have heard, as they put it on BT Sport in the scrum. Well, we apologise to you if you heard a word that you shouldn't have heard earlier on.”

Webb ended the programme by saying it had been a “very eventful morning”.

The moment was shared widely on Twitter, including by Dino Sofos, the creator of the BBC’s Brexitcast, who described Margolyes’ comments as “possibly the greatest moment in the Today programme’s history”.