Skip to main content

An Open Letter to Boris Johnson

By December 15, 2008News

Dear Boris,

Now, you know how we feel about you here at BorisWatch towers. We think you’re great. Really. Generally speaking, we think your policy decisions are marvellous, and as for your hair… well, it really is something spectacular. In fact, we’re hard-pressed to think of a time where we haven’t seen fit to laud your accomplishments and generally sing your praises.

But you don’t half make it hard for us sometimes.

We like the fact that you keep a very prominent public profile. It makes it easy (and fun!) to write about you, and we like having the Mayor of our nation’s capital be able to match wits with intellectual heavyweights like Jeremy Clarkson. We were even willing to forgive you for the poor laptime you gave on your last stint on Top Gear. We defended you to our friends down the pub. The sun was in his eyes, we said. He must have been ill, we said. You finished in 1m56s. We can’t go back to that pub anymore.

But still, we forgave you. We almost managed to forget it, even, to scrub it from our memories the way it deserved, to keep your Adonis-like perfection intact in our minds. Then you went and did this:

Boris Johnson on Top Gear.

1m57s, Boris. You’re slower than Michael Parkinson. You’re slower than Tom Jones. You’re slower than Helen Mirren, and she’s the closest thing they could get to having the actual Queen driving round the track.

We just don’t know what to think, Boris. We want to hope that you’ll do better next time — if there is a next time — but it’s hard to keep dreaming.

Please don’t keep doing this to us.

Yours, with a strange (and unfamiliar) feeling of disappointment,

The Staff of BorisWatch Towers

PS. The interview was great.

2 Comments

Leave a Reply