“What happened in the Second World War? Cut this for a second. What did we do in the Second World War?”
Boris Johnson, whatever you may think of him, has made much of his political career off the back of a self-perpetuated loveable buffoon image, demonstrated by the now infamous anecdote of him purposefully messing up his hair and making his tie wonky before his debut appearances on Have I Got News For You.
This is his image now, whether he is rugby tackling a pseudo-celebrity during a charity soccer match or refusing to apologise for comparing Muslim women to letterboxes by offering up mugs of tea to some journalists waiting outside his home.
After playing the horrible school bully during much of his media career, he turned to become the class-clown for his political one, representing an archaic mode of Britishness – the eccentric posh weirdo – well enough that large swathes of the population slowly became fans of the most ridiculous man in a sea of ridiculous men, the one who managed to project his own cold-hearted ineptness into endearing, helpless bumbling.
The new BBC Two series, Inside the Foreign Office, showed a clip that epitomises what Boris Johnson is as a politician. And a person.
In it, he:
- Forgets what happened in the Second World War
- Gets a stat completely the wrong way round and has to be corrected
- Implies that he thinks James Bond is real
- And also Portuguese
- Moans at his assistant for giving him information in a briefing that he went on to misinterpret
- Says “okie kokie”
Probably my favourite bit of The Thick Of It ever… pic.twitter.com/fNCLCheuOq
— David Schneider (@davidschneider) November 27, 2018
If, after watching the video, you still believe Boris Johnson is the loveable rogue of British politics and not just a completely and utterly appalling man who masquerades as a politician, then that can’t be helped.
Throw enough schtick at a wall, and usually, it sticks.
