Petronella Wyatt

Diary – 11 July 2019

I am beginning to feel like a sort of fairground curiosity: one of those pickled things in jars that Victorians stared at. It is Boris’s fault. Because I once had a close friendship — all right, all right, a tendresse — with Mr Johnson, I am pointed at, photographed, and harried in the aisles of shops. Soon members of the public will be tearing off bits of my clothes — something Russian peasants used to do with anyone who had met the Tsar, as if this would bestow some of Batiushka’s divine status. Tabloid journalists doorstep me, believing I have the answers. I am a female Zoltan Kapathy; not so much an imposterologist as a Borisologist. My present policy is to pretend that I am insane. Just as no insane person could be executed under the law (until Henry VIII changed it), I operate on the premise that no journalist will bother with a person who isn’t playing with a full deck. Earlier this week, a red-top reporter rang my doorbell. He asked me whether Boris would be a good prime minister. I stuck my head out of the window and tilted my head. He waited for the oracle. ‘Better than Pitt the Younger and Pitt the Elder.’ This engendered some confusion. ‘Erm, were they one person or two?’ I laughed maniacally and rolled my eyes like Marty Feldman. The poor booby pressed on. ‘But what about Boris’s faults?’ ‘What faults?’ He made a slow recovery from this, but then played what he thought would be a blinder. ‘But what about all the women?’ ‘What women?’ This time I had got him. ‘Sorry to have troubled you, Ms Wyatt.’

Rod Liddle tells me I should do a documentary about Boris. I am.

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