Boris Johnson is by no means short of a bob or two but when I challenged him to create a limerick for The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry Competition (prize £1,000) he was unable to resist.
Naturally, during his interview with me and Urs Gehriger, for the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche – which I call the Swiss Spectator – the subject of the migrant crisis – and the EU’s recent German-driven deal with Turkey to stop the migrant tide from the east – cropped up.
And so too did the criminal prosecution in Germany of the comedian Jan Böhmermann, for a poem accusing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of getting his rocks off with goats. In Germany – as Angela Merkel was swift to remind everyone – it is a criminal offence to insult or ridicule foreign heads of state, no matter how evil they are.
‘That is a scandal!’ Boris said.
‘If somebody wants to make a joke about the love that flowers between the Turkish president and a goat, he should be able to do so, in any European country, including Turkey.’
So I asked the buccaneer captain of the Brexiteers – and Oxford classics scholar – if he himself had entered the poetry competition.
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