It felt like watching Softy Walter take on Dennis the Menace
Boris Johnson’s eyes darted distractedly from side to side on Andrew Marr’s sunday morning show. His bizarre mop was brittle, almost straw-like, his face contoured in an interesting array of detailed spirographs.
The Prime Ministerial shirt and tie – arranged in a smorgasbord of haphazard angles – looked as though it had been physically yanked over his considerable frame only moments before by his team of advisors. Entirely possible. i’m told he only made it onto camera in the nick of time.
All in all, this was not the look of a man who had enjoyed a jovial saturday off.
in usual circumstances, the PM would have been out leafleting in a touch-and-go constituency or munching, perhaps, on some locally produced fare at the constituency farmers’ market.
But thanks to Friday’s stabbings on London Bridge, it had been a weekend of Cobra meetings, security updates and briefings, briefings, briefings.
Mr Marr, meanwhile, was far from his usual avuncular self. He appeared peeved, uptight. Before Friday’s ghastly events, there were rumours Boris planned an interview with Marr as a way of side-stepping an encounter with his BBC colleague Andrew Neil, who pulverised Jeremy Corbyn into a fine dust on Tuesday.
No interviewer likes to be thought of as a soft touch. Marr appeared in the mood for blood. Like Neil, he chose to dispense with the opening pleasantries and went straight in on Usman Khan.
He was so forthright i half expected him to swivel his chair around, like some illtempered, coffee-breathed TV cop, and spark up an Embassy filter.
Boris faffed about with the usual tributes to the emergency services before an unseemly squabble broke out as to why a convicted terrorist had been released so soon from prison.
Boris said the judges were compelled to let him out by laws Labour brought in back in 2008 which he had voted against.
Jeremy Corbyn had apparently been all for it, conveniently. Ugh. something so uncomfortable when MPs start playing politics with these sorts of events. Lib Dem Chukka Umunna and that old charlatan shami Chakrabarti said as much on the show moments previously before proceeding to do exactly that.
Marr demanded to know why Boris hadn’t bothered changing the law. ‘For ten years you’ve done nothing about it!’
He kept stammering like a busted windup doll. ‘i’ve been in power 120 days!’ Boris countered. What a ratty exchange it was.
EACH time Marr tried to get a question in – almost begging on occasion – Boris shouted him down. softy Walter versus Dennis the Menace. ‘i need to ask you some questions because that’s the way it goes,’ said Marr impatiently at one point as Boris jabbered away.
Khan’s release conditions were raised. Boris didn’t seem enormously clued up about them. somehow the previous Labour Government’s woeful economic record came into play.
We eventually moved on to election matters. Marr had the PM on shaky ground briefly on social care which Boris inexplicably used as a chance to remind us of the importance of getting Brexit done.
Marr kept wagging his briefing notes, irritably. This interview wasn’t going anywhere and he seemed to know it.
There followed a query about library closures. What? ‘You just keep going on and on, you’re chuntering,’ Marr muttered as the PM carried on trying to bulldoze him.
Boris: ‘Well, you keep interrupting if you don’t mind me saying.’
Marr then asked why Boris was chickening out of an interview with Neil.
‘Because i think we’ve got a perfectly brilliant Andrew interviewing me here,’ Boris grinned. Google translate: ‘Because he’s far tougher than you are, Andrew.’
Marr had a final query, what us hacks call the Columbo question (‘oh, just one more thing...’) He wanted to know if Boris would be meeting Donald Trump when he’s in town for this week’s Nato meeting.
of course, said Boris. Bit weird if he didn’t, surely?
As the credits rolled, Marr shuffled his papers awkwardly. His predecessor David Frost used to treat his guests to bacon and eggs, and a flute of buck’s fizz.
Judging by their body language, i suspect Boris was hightailing straight back to Downing street.