Nadine Dorries mocked over ‘downstreaming movies’ and ‘tennis pitches’ comments in online video

Everybody has at least one relative who thinks cricket is played with a racquet or talks about FaceTube and Twitterbook. Not everybody can be au fait with all of the lingo all of the time.

One person you might expect to know her bowling green from her petanque pitch is Nadine Dorries, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

Nevertheless, the Cabinet minister is being mocked online after appearing in a video on social media in which she talks about “downstreaming movies” and “tennis pitches” where people can “exercise your sports”.

Appearing on the TikTok page of fellow Conservative MP Luke Evans, Ms Dorries tried to introduce herself and explain her role.

Describing the job of culture secretary, she said: “We’re responsible for making sure you have superfast broadband in your home, that means you can downstream your movies.”

She said she wanted to “make the internet in the UK the safest internet in the world”.

Ms Dorries went on to say that DCMS was also “responsible for everything to do with sport, making sure you’ve got football pitches and that you have tennis pitches in your communities where you can play and exercise your sport.”

It’s not clear why Dr Evans uploaded the video despite the errors.

Ms Dorries is far from the first prominent politician to try to get down with the kids.

David Cameron admitted that he thought LOL stood for “lots of love” rather than its actual meaning, “laughing out loud”.

He also once got confused about which football team he supported, telling voters he’d rather they supported West Ham, when in fact he claims to support the similarly claret-and-blue attired Aston Villa.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown was widely mocked after pretending to know about the Arctic Monkeys and later admitting he didn’t know the names of any of their songs.

A series of missteps

Ms Dorries is racking up more than a few such moments.

In January, she wrongly claimed that the Blair-Brown handover took place in the era before rolling TV news and social media to argue that a general election would have to follow if Boris Johnson was deposed.

The same week, she also mistook a satirical tweet by the comedian Joe Lycett for a genuine message of support. She retweeted and later deleted the post which read: “dont rise to it babe, im with nadine we r on ur side no matter what xoxox”.

More seriously, during a parliamentary committee hearing on the privatisation of Channel 4, she stumbled badly when she appeared not to know that the channel operates commercially and is not taxpayer-funded.