Meet Molly the potty mouthed parrot who's been turning the air blue

The 13-year-old African Grey lives at the historic Red Lion pub in Southampton High Street for nearly all her life.

She originally came to the watering hole in 2002 when landlady Natasha Morris wanted to get a pet for her daughter Rochelle, and decided to choose a ‘talking bird’ because she did not want to keep a dog at the pub for hygiene reasons as The Red Lion serves food.

Since then Natasha, 38 and her husband Tony, 55, have never looked back and the foul mouthed bird has become a huge hit with regulars at the pub.

Although many of her catchphrases are too x-rated for this newspaper, she has some which are more family friendly like ‘Molly wants a cracker’, ‘Molly is a good girl’ and she even mimics the last orders bell when the pub closes.

Mrs Morris, said: “She loves the customers and she eats anything. She started talking when she was nine or 10 weeks old and the first thing she said was Molly is a good girl.

“Her vocabulary has increased lots sometimes naughty words other times she will say molly is a good girl, molly wants a cracker, sometimes she calls out peoples names.

"She says the naughty words over and over again and I have to put a crisp in her mouth to shut her up.”

Molly lives in a specially made cage just a few feet away from the bar and punters often feed her a variety of traditional pub classics including steak, crisps and scratchings.

Regular punter Colin Colclough, 56, said: “I love her, I feed her sometimes now and again she loves eating crisps and pork scratchings, I think she brings a bit of character to the pub.

“She has a few choice words about Portsmouth, I think she might have picked them up from the regulars.”

While Robert Robinson, 48, is also a big fan of the bird. He said: “Normally first thing in the morning she starts the day off with a few swear words, she gets very excited when there is no-one here.”

Natasha Morris hopes Molly will continue to be a hit with regulars and new customers and thinks the watering hole would be a different place without her.

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Natasha, added: “I think all the customers love her. I have got one customer who comes down from up north and once a year and she brings Molly a present and not me, but everybody comes in to see her especially children they love her she just adds character to the building.”