Keeping my counsel on the Johnson clan

AS a new year begins to unfurl, a person can find themselves attempting to assess the achievements, or lack thereof, they’ve experienced throughout all the previous years.

The writer of these words was doing just that this week after someone said: “If your newspaper column is as popular as you say, why – after 20 years writing the damned thing – have you never been snapped up by one of the nationals?”

Well, I am about to give an example as to why I’ve never been offered four figure sums for 500 words, but first… One reason I know how much some columnists are paid is that a person close to the present prime minister – he is still in the job at the time of writing – told me years ago they were earning £750 a week for a regular essay half the length of the one you’re reading now.

Given inflation, that’s over a grand today. I read one of her columns afterwards to see if it was worth such a sum – and it was all about how bothersome nannies could be when you took them out of London into the countryside, mainly because they refused to wear wellington boots. Which is a common problem faced by all of us, so I realised she really was earning every penny by aiming her erudite arrows straight at the nitty-gritty of modern day life.

Sorry. Being bitter and sarcastic there, probably because I have never been paid a fraction of those wages. No wonder she could afford to employ nannies…

And bitterness and sarcasm are not attractive traits for a columnist, so there’s another reason I remain poverty stricken in my Exmoor hovel. Decency, honesty and having a sense of honour don’t seem to count for much either – at least, not when it comes to climbing a writer’s greasy pole. There are, believe it or not, journalists who have risen right to the top without having a single atom of those characteristics in their bones.

Talking, as I was earlier, of the Prime Minister, here is another example why I’ve never been on the thousand-quid-for-five-hundredwords circuit. Regular readers will know that I used to be close friends with Boris’s rather colourful family, so I could, if I had no decency, honesty or sense of honour, have spilled some juicy beans by recounting some of my memories in public. Indeed, I have been offered sizeable sums of dosh to do so, but have always refused.

Yes, I have mentioned the Johnsons of Exmoor and my friendship with the PM’s grandfather and grandmother in this column, but I’ve rarely recounted those memories since Boris moved to Downing St.

Why? Because I prefer being honourable. There was a time when I drank Johnson gin and consumed plates of their excellent food – it would be wrong all these years later to repay them by dramatising a load of old nonsense from the distant past. There are stories that would make headlines if told in a suitably theatrical way, but they wouldn’t amount to much if we weren’t talking about the human landscape surrounding a prime minister’s early life. Certain clan members were, shall we say, not always paragons of virtue – but then, that is true of most families.

I have been tempted to make the odd memory-related observation in connection with the PM’s more dubious bouts of behaviour, but have refrained even from that. Not because I am still in touch with the Johnsons – I haven’t seen anything of the family for some years – but those old memories are dear to me. We had some good times; why would I besmirch recollections of those golden days spent in their truly beautiful Exmoor valley?

It would have been easy to have a pop, but I knew Boris’s incredibly elitist ‘one rule for me, one for everyone else’ default stance in life would eventually be his undoing. The only thing that puzzles me is where he got it from. His wonderful grandparents may have been regarded as ‘posh’ by us ordinary West Somerset mortals, but they were the least snobby or stuck-up landowners I have ever known. I found myself thinking of them as I watched Boris being harangued at this week’s PMQs. Seeing his frightened looking face peering out from under the mop of blonde hair, I was suddenly reminded of his grandmother. When Boris gets worried or anxious, he looks very much like the old lady.

She was French, and I’ve always thought she must have turned in her grave watching her grandson’s role in Brexit. Buster, as she was known, was a bright woman, brilliant at Scrabble… Once, when I was planning a trip to Alsace, she asked if I’d bring home a photograph of a town called Colmar, which is where her family came from. I did better – I sent her a postcard of a square named after her ancestors, featuring a statue of one of them – a poet called Théophile Conrad Pfeffel.

I wonder what Théophile would think of his controversial descendent? He might admire some of the more colourful language.

Anyway, no dirt-digging here. Just a sideways glance at a politician who might soon be off to write his own memoirs.

‘I drank the Johnson gin and ate their food...It would be wrong to repay them badly

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