He had bags under his eyes like freshly shucked oysters
ALaTe night followed by an early morning meeting... Let’s face it: we’ve all been there. Your eyelids glued shut with sleepy dust while your voice is an indecipherable croak.
That was the position Boris Johnson found himself in yesterday after inviting the BBC Breakfast folk to Downing Street for his first interview of 2020.
I may be doing the Prime Minister a grave disservice but watching him hunched over in his chair like a chiropractor’s nightmare, he betrayed all the signs of a man who had only just rolled out of bed.
His eyeballs were puffy, the droopy bags which had taken up residence beneath them plumper than two shucked oysters. His socks had been hurriedly hoiked up at half mast, revealing two unappealing rectangles of pasty flesh.
and let’s not even get started on the hair. It couldn’t have looked more shambolic if he’d stumbled into a bathroom and jammed two fingers into the ‘shavers only’ socket.
It provided quite the contrast to his smartly dressed interrogator, Dan Walker. He’s the fresh-faced Breakfast chap who always reminds me of a butcher’s apprentice.
Dijon-keen Dan had been loitering outside Downing Street all morning, revved up and ready to go. Funny that. Prime Ministers used to start the year traipsing over to andrew Marr’s Ikea-strewn studio. But old Jug ears’ shouty interview with the PM following November’s London Bridge stabbings clearly hasn’t been forgotten in a hurry.
Top of Mr Walker’s agenda yesterday was Iran. Boris said it was time everyone cooled it, pushing his hands in that downward motion rugger refs make when diffusing a melee. He then challenged Donald Trump to come up with a new deal to stop Iran
developing nuclear weapons. ‘Mr Trump is a great deal-maker by his own accounts,’ he said with the slightest of grins.
Was Boris mocking the Prez? Their relationship seemed to me an avenue worth pursuing but Dan was in a hurry. ‘I don’t want to run out of time,’ he kept repeating bossily, possibly desperate to show us that there’s more in his locker than his early morning fluffy bunny routine.
Talk turned to the royal crisis. The dreaded Megxit. Boris immediately pulled a tonsil-flashing grimace. It was as though a nurse had just forced a giant teaspoon of cod liver oil down his gullet. Let’s not go there, he wailed, perhaps all too aware that he was hardly an ideal vessel for dispensing family advice.
All this meant that Brexit barely got a look-in. A trade deal with the EU, the PM later insisted, was ‘especially likely’. Dan’s brogued hooves waggled impatiently. He was in a hurry to move on again. Latter stages of the interview were devoted to domestic matters.
By now Boris had fully woken up. His voice suddenly became impassioned. His eyes began travelling around the room as though addressing an imaginary audience. He spoke of using infrastructure to help unlock the potential of teenagers and tackling county lines drugs gangs.
This last point provoked a violent jabbing of fingers. ‘I want to see that thing totally wound up,’ he snapped. (Minor observation: It’s ‘yoof’ problems which always get the PM most animated.)
Several other interesting morsels followed: He’s all but given up on the US extraditing diplomat’s wife Anne Sacoolas over the death of Harry Dunn; he challenged the US to come up with an alternative provider to Chinese firm Huawei; the delayed report into supposed Russian electoral interference would be published in a matter of weeks.
OH, and the PM admitted he’d long since abandoned the vegan (‘ vee- gan’) diet he took up during the Tory leadership contest, before taking us off on a tangent about cheese.
As is often the case with Boris, we were in danger of being sucked into the theatre of the absurd. Dan announced it was time he skedaddled, reminding his host he had a Cabinet meeting in an hour’s time.
The PM responded with a theatrical ‘stone the crows’ glance at his wristwatch. It was just possible he might be able to squeeze in 40 winks before kick-off.