MICHAEL Gove made racist and sexist remarks and joked about paedophilia, new recordings appear to show.

The Cabinet Office minister made a series of below the belt jibes during speeches at the Cambridge Union while he was in his 20s.

The Independent has published details of the comments which they say came to light in  recordings of the sessions, held in 1987, February 1993 and December 1993.

In one speech, the minister described Prince Charles as a “dull, wet, drippy adulterer” while in another he called people whose countries had been colonies by Britain “fuzzy wuzzies”.

He accused former Tory minister Leon Brittan of being a paedophile, and made sexual innuendos about Conservative minister Lucy Frazer.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster described Margaret Thatcher’s policies as a “new empire” where “the happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner” and said gay people “thrive primarily upon short-term relations”.

By 1993 Mr Gove was working as a BBC journalist.

In February of that year he made a number of comments about then European Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, speaking in favour of the motion “This House would rather have a degree from the university of life”.

Imagining an exchange between the two men, Mr Gove said Sir Leon told him: “[Leon] said: ‘Cambridge taught me an appreciation of music. And in particular an appreciation of the mature male soprano voice.”

Sir Leon also told him, Mr Gove imagined, that there was “no sound sweeter” than a young boy’s voice breaking, apart from the sound of that same boy involved in a sex act.

Mr Gove joked about reporting Sir Leon to “special branch” and saying that he “now satisfies his desires in the Bois de Boulogne and various other Brussels hang outs.”

Ten months later, in December 1993, Mr Gove made a speech in support of the motion “This House prefers a woman on top”.

He said that the current justice minister Lucy Frazer, who had invited him to speak, was “actually capable of tempting me into bed with her” and implied one college’s entire rugby club had had group sex with her.

He then referred to her “preference for peach-flavoured condoms,” and said she had done “remarkably well” to come from “the back streets of the slums of Leeds”.

During his final year at Oxford in 1987, Mr Gove spoke in favour of the motion “This House believes that the British Empire was lost on the playing fields of Eton”.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is reported to have used a racial slur, saying: “It may be moral to keep an empire because the fuzzy-wuzzies can’t look after themselves.

“It may be immoral to keep an empire because the people of the third world have an inalienable right to self-determination, but that doesn’t matter whether it’s moral or immoral.”

The speech also included Mr Gove’s opinions on Margaret Thatcher’s policies, which he described as “rigorously, vigorously, virulently, virilely, heterosexual”.

He continued: “We are at last experiencing a new empire: an empire where the happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner.

“At last Mrs Thatcher is saying I don’t give a fig for what half of the population say because the richer half will keep me in power. This may be amoral, this may be immoral, but it’s politics and it’s pragmatism.”

Mr Gove, who became an MP in 2005, also said the Prince of Wales was an example of how university education makes people boring and described him as “a dull, wet, drippy adulterer whose romantic conversation is dominated by lavatorial detail.”

Another jibe was made at the expense of the then-president of the Union, with Mr Gove saying: “Putting you in charge of the Cambridge Union was rather like putting Slobodan Milosevic in Serbian high command in charge of a rape crisis centre.

Wendy Chamberlain, Liberal Democrats MP for North East Fife said Boris Johnson should consider Mr Gove’s cabinet position.

She said: “Michael Gove should be ashamed that he ever thought these things, let alone said them. These inappropriate and racist remarks are not befitting of a government minister, not befitting a journalist, in fact not befitting anyone.

“The Prime Minister should consider whether this is the type of person that deserves to be sat around the cabinet table. However, given Boris Johnson’s own history of disgraceful remarks, I expect this will be another shameful issue he lets go unchallenged.”

Mr Gove and Ms Frazer declined to comment.