Boris Johnson denies missing COBRA meetings because he was writing book on Shakespeare

O Bojo, Bojo! Wherefore art thou Bojo? Busy writing a biography, apparently

As was recently reported by a number of different outlets, there have been rumblings that the Prime Minister missed as many as five crucial COBRA meetings scheduled to discuss the impending coronavirus pandemic prior. He chaired his first on March 2nd last year, just two weeks before the first lockdown. It is thought that there are fears Dominic Cummings could reveal that the reason behind his absence was to work on a Shakespeare biography, as not only did he have a deadline but because he needed the money to fund his divorce from Marina Wheeler. You couldn't write this stuff. Well, you could, just don't get Boris to do it - he's clearly very busy. However, speaking on behalf of Johnson today, a No.10 spokesperson has come out to deny that this is the case. The spokesman did not deny that the PM is currently working on the project (announced as early as 2016) but did say he was "not aware" of the PM doing any work on the biography since he took office. Johnson is believed to have been at Chequers for the first five COBRA meetings in January and February 2020, though Downing Street maintains he had been “leading the response throughout”, adding that it is not unusual for these meetings to sometimes be chaired by other ministers. Cummings went on a lengthy Twitter tirade - a staggering 56 tweets in a single thread (probably filling the time on a long drive to Barnard Castle) - on Saturday, 22nd May, stating that lockdown and numerous deaths could have been avoided if "competent people" were in charge. Big dub. No stranger to controversy himself but big dub, nonetheless. As a former journalist, this isn't his first book, having written The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History back in 2014. This latest and ever longer-delayed biography is entitled Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius and is now approaching five years since it was due to arrive. Again, we're more than happy to wait for him to do his actual job before finishing this one, to be honest. We're not exactly starved for literature on the most famous writer in history.