Steerpike Steerpike

Nick Clegg upstages Boris as the funnyman

Take note of the date Tuesday 8 October 2013, for it was on this day a politician actually made a funny joke. Giving a speech at the fortieth birthday party for London’s talk radio station, Boris Johnson described LBC as the ‘the teaming womb of broadcast radio’, quoted Plato and labelled the Office of Deputy Prime Minister as ‘entirely ceremonial’.

And the Mayor had cause to be needled by Clegg. The Liberal leader had just given a far funnier star turn. Recording a video for the party, Clegg lamented about his weekly radio call in on the station ‘I have to listen to people banging on about crime and immigration every week… that’s before I’ve even left cabinet’.

There’s always one person that kills the mood though, and it will come as no surprise that it was Ken Livingstone. The former Mayor refused to clap his successor and spent most of the speech yelling ‘bollocks’ from a sedentary, and well oiled, position.

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