During the Newbury by-election in May 1993, Lamont was asked at a press conference whether he most regretted claiming to see "the green shoots of recovery" or "singing in his bath". He replied by quoting the Edith Piaf song "Je ne regrette rien", a dry response which raised a laugh at the press conference but which played poorly when quoted later on the television that evening and afterwards. When called to defend him on "Newsnight" his friend the former Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt caused further merriment by claiming that Lamont could do an excellent impersonation of a Scops-owl (whose cry, Lamont later explained, "sounds like a tennis ball emitter").