There’s no one better than Boris

Eighteen months ago, I wrote a column for this magazine saying I regretted having been such a Boris enthusiast for the past 40 years. As a lockdown sceptic, I was disillusioned by his role in the greatest interference in personal liberty in our history. Where was the mischievous, freedom-loving, Falstaffian character I’d grown to love? Oliver Hardy had turned into Oliver Cromwell.

Mercifully, Roundhead Boris was a temporary aberration. Indeed, the furrowed-browed, finger-wagging Prime Minister of those endless Downing Street press briefings turned out to be just another act in the Covid pantomime, with the Boris of old making whoopee behind the scenes. I am probably one of the few people in the country who was delighted to discover that he didn’t take the ludicrous coronavirus regulations seriously, even if he is the head of the government that came up with them. I will only regard the forthcoming Sue Gray report as ‘devastating’ for Boris if he doesn’t leap from its pages as the raspberry-blowing leader of the up-all-night, hard-drinking Downing Street fast set.