Dressing-down for Gove as Beyonce ringtone interrupts Cabinet meeting

Westminster has been rife with speculation about the former education secretary’s musical taste following reports his phone’s ring tone had interrupted a Cabinet meeting.

But Mr Gove’s wife Sarah Vine revealed it was actually a high-tech smartwatch that caused the disruption at the meeting of David Cameron’s top team.

She said it was US pop diva Beyonce whose “warblings” led to Mr Gove, who is supposed to be in charge of party discipline, being on the receiving end of a dressing down.

In her Daily Mail column she said the trouble had been caused by a Pebble smartwatch which she had given to him for Christmas.

She wrote: “Last week, during quite an important work meeting, an urgent email popped up in his inbox.

“Not wishing to seem rude by looking at his phone, he instead turned to his latest gadget, a Pebble smartwatch, which I bought him for Christmas.

“Despite its unprepossessing appearance, the Pebble is quite a powerful little thing. Not only can it tell the time, it can also pick up emails and text messages, screen calls, check the weather and, I’m told, control the boiler.

“Oh, and it can also play music. The trouble is that it takes a bit of getting used to. For if you press the wrong button, things can go disastrously wrong.”

The technological mishap occurred during last week’s Cabinet meeting when, as Chancellor George Osborne was “explaining a particularly complex piece of fiscal policy”, Mr Gove “mistakenly instructed his watch to play Beyonce’s latest oeuvre”.

Ms Vine wrote: “Try as he might, he simply could not silence her warblings. The more buttons he pressed, the more effusive she got.

“Eventually, he managed to switch her off, but not before he had received a stern reprimand from the Prime Minister himself.”