DAVID CAMERON has admitted that he let out a "little cry of joy" when David Bowie, through the medium of Kate Moss, called on Scots to reject independence in this September's referendum.

But the Prime Minister apparently did not have the same reaction following Kermit the Frog's endorsement of the Union last week.

Or perhaps the Conservative leader was reacting badly to Kermit's revelation that his long-time paramour, Miss Piggy, was backing Scotland leaving the UK.

For the cast of Sesame Street would have been shocked yesterday had they heard the language that Mr Cameron used to denounce his opponents, Labour leader Ed Miliband and his shadow chancellor Ed Balls at Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs).

That's right, you guessed, he called them "muppets".

And it was not meant as a compliment.

Nor was it taken as such by Labour.

While Ed and Ed valiantly pretended to shrug it all off some of their colleagues had less practised poker faces.

There were a number of shakes of the head on the Labour frontbench.

Further back on Labour benches there was a scramble among MPs to get out their smartphones, presumably to start searching for the terms "unparliamentary language" and "muppet".

In the end, as Kermit could have told them, "muppet" is allowed in the Mother of Parliaments.

Indeed Mr Cameron's outburst was far from unique in Commons history. There are more than two dozens uses of the word "muppet", presumably most of them insults, in the archives, going back decades.

Words that have been judged by the Commons officials to be unparliamentary over the years include blackguard, coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, rat, swine, traitor and stoolpigeon.

Even now, you have to ask, is the Prime Minister sitting in Downing Street wondering to himself: "Do we know where Big Bird stands on Scottish independence?"