Judge Seddon Cripps interrupted a fraud trial last week in St Albans, Hertfordshire, to ask what a sofa bed was.

When a witness replied with a brief description, Cripps, who lists “walking slowly” as his hobby in Who’s Who, replied: “How can a bed be turned into a sofa?”

Amid titters from barristers and jurors, the witness had to spend several minutes explaining how some sofas can be folded out to form makeshift beds.

The judge had earlier told the court he was unfamiliar with the word “futon”, the thin mattress of Japanese origin popular in Britain since the 1980s.

Cripps, 63, joins a long list of judges whose ignorance of popular culture has reinforced the judiciary’s reputation for being out of touch.

They include Lord Irvine, the former Lord Chancellor, who surprised a parliamentary committee in 1998 when he appeared not to have heard of B&Q, the DIY chain. In 2003, Judge Lewison perhaps understandably admitted defeat in the face of rap music lyrics in a trial that included terms such as “shizzle my nizzle” and “mish mish man”.

This weekend a spokesman for the department of constitutional affairs said Cripps readily accepted he had not heard of a futon or the concept of a sofa bed, adding: “He was trying to establish how big a piece of furniture it was. I don’t think he had come across a futon before.”

The department has recently announced a programme to try to broaden the social mix of Britain’s judges beyond its traditional dominance by public school men from Oxbridge.

In his summing-up, Cripps, an old Etonian who is a circuit court judge and president of the immigration services tribunal, confessed that others in court appeared to be “ahead of the game” when it came to modern furniture.

One court source said Cripps, who is a great-nephew of Sir Stafford Cripps, the post-war Labour chancellor, was well respected. “Judge Cripps is highly regarded by colleagues on the bench. Nonetheless, everybody was astonished by his questions.”

Other judges who have shown their lack of grasp of contemporary culture include Judge Hubert Dunn, who told a court in 2001 he had never heard of Pele, the Brazilian footballer. Two years earlier Judge Francis Aglionby asked what a Teletubby was.

In 1990 Mr Justice Harman asked: “Who is Gazza?” in a hearing at which he refused to grant an injunction to Paul Gascoigne, the footballer, to halt publication of an unauthorised biography. He later admitted he had not heard of the pop group Oasis.

In 1998, Mr Justice Popplewell failed to grasp the meaning of the “lunchbox” of Linford Christie, the Lycra-clad athlete.

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