Michael Gove made racist and homophobic comments and joked about paedophilia in speeches made when he was in his 20s, it emerged yesterday.
He also described Prince Charles as a 'dull, wet, drippy adulterer' in talks at the Cambridge Union.
The offensive remarks, made while he was a student at Oxford and after his graduation while he was working as a journalist, were supposed to be humorous.
He referred to people colonised by the British as 'fuzzy wuzzies' and joked that former Tory minister Sir Leon Brittan was a paedophile.
He also made a string of sexual jokes at the expense of Lucy Frazer, a former president of the Cambridge Union who is now a Tory justice minister, according to recordings of the talks uncovered by The Independent.
Michael Gove made racist and homophobic comments and joked about paedophilia in speeches made when he was in his 20s, it emerged yesterday
Mr Gove, who has been tipped for promotion to Foreign Secretary or Home Secretary in an expected reshuffle, claimed gay people 'thrive primarily upon short-term relations'.
Elsewhere, the Cabinet Office minister described Margaret Thatcher's policies as a 'new empire' where 'the happy South stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the Northerner'.
Mr Gove made the comments, which were met at the time by cheers, and shouts of 'shame', at three evening debates at the Cambridge Union in the winter of 1987 in February 1993 and in December 1993.
He was working on a now-defunct BBC politics programme in 1993, and also performed on Channel 4's short-lived comedy programme Stab in the Dark.
