ENTER the blond Beatle.
The sense of expectation had been building for 24 hours when BoJo deflected questions about his deep desire for Dave's job. Among the Westminster media cognoscenti there is little doubt the London Mayor has his gimlet eye on No 10.
And so the temptation was irresistible. Referring to how he had had a tete-a-tete with French politician Alain Juppe, the Tory toff teased his audience.
"He mentioned how he was the mayor of Bordeaux while he was Prime Minister of France. It's the kind of thing the French do." Pause. "A very good idea." Cue laughter and applause. "Joke, joke," he insisted, with the PM chuckling away in the front row.
Mr Juppe apparently boasted how Bordeaux, with a population of 239,917, was the ninth largest city in France and, quick as a flash, Bozza "hit the ball firmly over the net" and informed him that London had 250,000 French citizens, making it the sixth largest French city. "He said something like tiens."
Needless to say, the London Olympics featured in the mayor's speech, with him noting how the 2012 Games inspired a nation looking on from Britain's sofas to "paroxysms of excitement that it... probably helped to create one as well". "I have delivered, mes amis!" declared the tousle-haired one, pointing out how statistics showed the birth rate in London this year would be 136,942, more than in any year since 1966 when England won the World Cup "and the Prime Minister was born".
In a speech that, Frankie Howerd-style, wandered from the lubricant manufacturers of Bournemouth to the murderers of Brussels, "presumably with lobster picks", BoJo extolled the virtues of banking without a nanosecond of hesitation.
"If there was no strong banking sector in London, there would be no strong banking sector in Edinburgh," declared the straw-headed one.
Having had a pop at the Frenchies, it was time to turn to the Ruskies.
Complaining how there was "some geezer from the Kremlin", who had described Britain as a small island of no significance, BoJo noted how he did not want "polonium in my sushi" by bandying statistics with the likes of Vladimir Putin.
Or "by attacking their GDP or life expectancy, except to say that the UK vastly exceeds Russia in both. The serious point..."
But nobody wants the serious points, they love the comic ones, which means if the blond one decides to go for the Tory premiership in 2018 it will be pure Carry On Boris.
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