Nick Boles meets his doppelganger

The world of social media often goes through the looking glass, but today has been particularly bizarre. Housing minister Nick Boles has decided to join the fun and games on Twitter, announcing his arrival this afternoon. The problem is the popular parody account, General Boles. The General’s satirical pictures (such as the one above) and funnies enjoy a cult following in the Westminster village.  And he can be a plausible imposter; our friends at the Guardian, for instance, were taken in when he appeared.

In fact the General is such a power in the land that the real Boles, a minister of the Crown no less, has prostrated himself before this parody. ‘I will never be as funny or as good at Photoshop… I am but a pale imitation,’ he said earlier. That’s perhaps the only Boles pronouncement with which the general public will wholeheartedly agree.