‘I have absolutely no recollection of saying that’

SR: This is Seldom Ruffled from BBC News, outside 10 Downing St, where I’m joined by Boris Johnson. BJ: Good evening, I’m happy for you to quiz me on my Herculean efforts to navigate this great ship of state out of the Stygian gloom and onwards to the halcyon and sunlit uplands. Until, of course, I was thwarted by the herd mentality that so sadly prevails at Westminster.

SR: To be clear, Mr Johnson, you are committed to stepping down as prime minister and leaving Number 10?

BJ: Of course. I am a man of my word. SR: So no-one should be worried about the wall of sandbags and barbed wire being erected around the front door behind us?

BJ: Absolutely not. Just routine maintenance. Making it spick and span for the next chap, or gal.

SR: Prime minister, I put it to you that your pants are on fire.

BJ: They certainly are not!

SR: There is smoke coming out of them.

BJ: Well if you’re going to be one of these so-called journalists who airily says ‘‘if there’s smoke there’s fire’…’’

SR: Your pants are on fire because I can literally see the flames!

BJ: The British public don’t care one jot about the combustibility of my trousers. That is a private matter between a man and his garments. In any event, I categorically deny any ignition in the vicinity of my pants.

SR: How does that sit with the statement of one of your own former cabinet ministers, according to which you said ‘‘Get a load of my hot, hot pants. Do I make you horny, baby? Do I?’’ And to which he added that this is simply the latest in an ongoing series of pants-on-fire situations?

BJ: I have absolutely no recollection of saying that. And if I did, it was only momentarily and in the context of a work event. And I would draw the important distinction between pants that are hot and pants that are on fire.

SR: And you’re expecting your constituents to accept this?

BJ: Our constituents want us to finish building back better, but I understand their concerns and that is why I have commissioned Sue Gray, a top civil servant, to undertake a full inquiry.

SR: You don’t need an inquiry – you just need to look at your trousers!

BJ: No no, due process is important, and any learnings about what has been alleged to have been going on in my trousers should wait until that report is concluded and reported back to me as caretaker prime minister, in about three or four months.

SR: The Downing St press office is right now admitting that literally right before this interview you said, and I quote ‘‘Look at my pants, they are on fire’’. Although in your defence they are now characterising that as a ‘misstatement’.

BJ: And I take full responsibility for saying once, sometime in the past when I was dealing with matters of grave national importance, that my pants were on fire when fact they were not and never have been.

SR: ‘‘Sometime in the past’’ being two minutes ago.

BJ: Only in a literal sense.

SR: I see that the London Fire Brigade has arrived and is now hosing down your trousers with fire retardant foam and using the jaws of life to cut them off.

BJ: Excellent, well I think we can put what remains of my pants firmly behind us and I can continue in my self-appointed role.

SR: Mr Johnson if you continue down this road you’ll end up with no clothes at all.

BJ: Then you can call me Emperor.