Conservative backbench MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, has told 'friends' that he is going to redouble his annual efforts to loosen the lid on a jar of Pan Yan mustard pickle despite having failed to do so every Christmas since 1987.
The former Leader Of The House has confided that he has been undergoing a strength-training program with a view to finally completing a task that has thwarted his best efforts since Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street.
Following his initial vain attempt in '87, the Old Etonian's struggles were reportedly met with a fair amount of good-natured derision by family and friends seated around the Boxing Day table at Rees-Mogg's Somerset home.
Amongst other jibes, he was branded, a 'weed' and a 'socialist girly that couldn't knock the skin off a rice pudding'
Eventually, a totally spent and heavily sweating Rees-Mogg claimed that the lid was 'cross-threaded' and that, 'The machine must have put it on wrong' before angrily storming from the room.
According to sources, he has made vain, clandestine attempts to loosen the lid during night-time visits to the kitchen every Christmas for the last thirty-four years.
During this time he has used a number of gambits, including, soaking the jar in easing oil, clamping the lid in a bench vice before twisting the body of the jar wrapped in a tea towel, deploying a Mole Wrench, and tapping around the edges of the lid with a pair of antique brass nutcrackers.
However, his wife, Helena, told a Sunday Times journalist in a 2015 interview that he has actually been trying to turn it the wrong way the entire time but has sullenly refused to accept the fact, claiming that he has been opening jars of tasty delicacies and sweetmeats since his time attending midnight feasts at prep school and that people 'should jolly well mind their own business'.
In 2019, Rees-Mogg famously had to ask Her Majesty The Queen to open the door to let him out of a hospitality room at Balmoral after he was unable to turn a heavy brass door knob following his now notorious visit when he lied to her about the legality of the prorogation of Parliament.
After the incident, he was met with catcalls and howls of derision from the Labour benches in a raucous parliamentary session, during which he claimed that he 'must have already loosened it a bit for her'.
