Paxmanic

In Competition No. 2851 you were invited to mark Jeremy Paxman’s departure from Newsnight by supplying an extract from an interview with a politician or statesman in which the interviewer doggedly but unsuccessfully attempts to get a straight answer to a straight question. There’s space only to announce that the winners take £30 and W.J. Webster nabs £35 for his entry, which features a slippery Boris Johnson.

I. Would you like to replace David Cameron as Prime Minister?

B.J. With whom? Good grief, man, there’s no vacancy and I’m no kingmaker.
I. Nor a potential rival?

B.J. He is my leader and I think of myself as his fidus Achates. I stroll pleasantly in the cool of his shadow.
I. But if he were for some reason…

B.J. ‘If’ is a word that translates us into an imaginary world. I prefer to deal in bracing reality.
I. In reality, then, would you hope to be Prime Minister?

B.J. Every foot-soldier, they say, has a field-marshal’s baton in his knapsack.