Boris on PM
(No, not Boris for PM, like those terrifying Facebook groups.)
I’ve just heard that Boris will be interviewed live by Eddie Mair on Radio 4’s PM at some point in the next hour. Could be worth a listen, or a Listen Again if you’re reading this after it’s been on.
À la ITV London Tonight ‘debate’ yesterday, I’ll give you my thoughts on the interview after it’s been on.
Update: Well, that was rather good. Eddie Mair is a formidable interviewer and gave Boris a real grilling, with which he could barely cope.
He was really on edge throughout, and following his usual tactic of desperately trying to find a way back to one of his ready-prepared lines: in a discussion about his smoking gaffe he somehow tried to steer the conversation onto making the streets safer; and while covering his laughable policy on Tube strikes (which has already been dismissed by the RMT as being the stuff of ‘cloud cuckoo land’), he tried to steer things around to the debatable statistic he keeps chanting about relative mugging likelihoods in London and New York.
I recorded the exchange on DAB, so it’s in MP2 format at the moment, which most computer-based media players should handle, not sure about portable ones though. For a highlight, skip forward to 2:58 and you’ll hear Boris apparently coming rather close to losing his rag with his interrogator over the question of the great Bus Black Hole:
Eddie: At a cost of?
Boris: [finishes his meandering sentence, then] At or about £100m.
Eddie: Why did it take so long to get that figure out of you? Because you’ve said [Boris tries to interrupt – a common feature of this interview] all through the campaign it was £8m.
Boris: [Cuts his interruption short and draws breath, perhaps counting to ten very quickly in his head] I’m sorry – pay attention if you don’t mind!
You have to hear the way he says ‘mind’ - the amount of fury and frustration pent up in it is a sound to behold!
What we hear in this interview is yet more confirmation of the picture we’ve been building up throughout this campaign, of a self-centred man who’s been brought up to think he’s the most important person in any room and anyone questioning that is treated as astonishing or plain rude. Not to mention of course the usual picture of a man incapable of engaging on any given issue but instead hell-bent on returning to the handful of topics he’s learnt his lines on.
He’s a selfish, lightweight buffoon, with unimplementable, poorly thought-out policies, who couldn’t possibly cope for four years as Mayor.
Update: an extremely kind Boris-stopper has gone to the trouble of transcribing this interview!