Here’s a lesson in how not to act when promotion your mayoral campaign – the day before the election!
There was a Boris-shaped absence on Jeremy Vine (Radio 2) yesterday. While Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick were ready to talk, the other leading mayoral candidate had gone awol. “Where are you, Boris?” cried Vine, all fidgety. “We’ve got an all points bulletin out on Boris,” he explained over the end of a track. “That’s Blondie,” he added, with a chuckle. “How about that? Coincidence.”
“If you can see Boris,” Vine implored listeners, “call us.” One, declaring himself “the only Tory in Skelmsersdale”, went further than that. “I have now rung Conservative head office to say you are looking for him,” he said. Another couldn’t see Johnson, but had watched him on Question Time and reassured Vine, “He’ll make an awful lot more sense if he’s not there.”
Finally, after Livingstone spoke over the racket of a noisy cafe and the audience had a bit of fun with the absent contributor (“He’s busy working in the chip shop with Elvis”), Johnson called in, all breathless and vague. Asked where he was the day before the London elections, he replied simply, “I’m in London.” All three contributions were a bit underwhelming, but Vine ended the show happy. “Well,” he sighed, “we completed the set.”
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