Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries is facing investigation over an alleged tweet in which she made a jibe about a local councillor’s manhood.

John Morris, who sits on Huntingdonshire District Council in the MP’s constituency, flagged the post to the Parliamentary Standards Commission.

He was not aware of the 2015 tweet until someone highlighted it to him earlier this week.

At the time, Dorries had called former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown ‘the most self important, up his own backside, failed politician in Westminster’.

In response, Cllr Morris asked the Mid Bedfordshire MP: ‘Did you drink too much wine last night?’

The politician responded: ‘Are you just a misogynist with a small d***?’

Cllr Morris, who represents Brampton and Hinchingbrooke, said he was ‘appalled’ when the tweet was brought to his attention.

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He told the Ely Standard: ‘I know Nadine Dorries is thought of as a bit of a character and has a reputation for shooting from the hip, but it is appalling.

‘Misogyny should be taken seriously and this tweet serves only to devalue the real issue.’

While Cllr Morris does not want the MP to lose her job for the remark, he does expect an apology.

He added: ‘It is more than ironic that at a time the government is working to pass its Online Safety Bill, which seeks to introduce controls and punishments for online abuse, at the same time the Secretary of State for Digital if herself dishing out online abuse.’

It isn’t the first time Dorries has been called out over her tweets as she tries to make the internet a more civil place.

In 2013, Sunday Mirror journalist Ben Glaze asked Dorries how her daughter Jennifer could provide ‘secretarial support’ at a cost of £35,000 per year to the taxpayer.

This was a fair question, considering she lived 89 miles from her mum’s constituency office and 96 miles from Westminster.

But Dorries didn’t seem to think so, responding: ‘Be seen within a mile of my daughters and I will nail your balls to the floor… using your own front teeth. Do you get that?’

As she was grilled by the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill earlier this month, it appeared some of her previous tweets may fall foul of her proposed reforms.

SNP MP John Nicholson pointed out once example in which she called LBC radio host James O’Brien a ‘public school posh boy f**k wit’.

This was despite the fact that Dorries had sent two of her daughters to the same school – Ampleforth College, a fee paying boarding school in North Yorkshire.

She made he remark as the pair got into a heated debate about the European Union.

At first Dorries claimed she didn’t remember the tweet, but went on to say: ‘I thank you for reminding me of that comment.

‘I do receive a huge amount of abuse online. What you’re allowing me to do is highlight the importance of this bill in terms of misinformation and disinformation.

‘So that comment may have been as a result – if you’d like to at Mr O’Brien’s tweets – some of the appalling things that as a woman are directed towards me online.’

She then goes on to say that Nicholson has tweeted about her and ‘mentioned my name a couple of times in this committee hearing’ – to which he replies ‘none of it offensive’.

At a later session, Dorries was grilled again over her tweets about O’Brien – this time one in which she called him a ‘hate preacher, a liar, a misogynist, a UK hater & an apologist for Islamist atrocities’.

When Nicolson suggested the comment was ‘defamatory and grotesque’, she replied: ‘I don’t agree with you and I haven’t come here today to answer about tweets I sent years ago.

‘I do understand the context, in my role as a secretary of state but as I said, as a female politician…I quite often do, as many females do, have to respond assertively to the numerous, aggressive, unpleasant tweets and I would – looking at your own tweet history – wouldn’t say it was something to be particularly proud of either.”

Nicolson replied: ‘Oh you’ll find no abuse in my tweet history.’

As Dorries was making the remarks before a parliamentary committee – her comments were protected by parliamentary privilege.

The safeguard allows MPs in both houses to speak freely in their duties with protection against civil or criminal liability.

Commenting on Tuesday’s hearing, O’Brien tweeted: ‘Haven’t heard it yet but would be delighted to provide her with a public platform to repeat any allegations in public…’

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