IF the Conservative conference has a funny bone, then it is the job of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to tickle it.
The blond Beatle bounced on stage and, with a rustle of his straw helmet, had the audience eating out of his hand as he gabbled along in his own idiosyncratic way, interrupting himself with witty observations and a humorous riposte that had the delegates in stitches.
Of course, Ed Miliband's amnesia on the deficit brought forth a dish that had to be served at minus 50 degrees. The Labour leader's subconscious had rebelled, snipped the Mayor. "The baggage handlers in his memory went on strike - as they would under a Labour government - and refused to load the word 'deficit' on to the conveyor belt of his tongue."
The next target to pop up on the fairground target of Bozza's imagination was none other than King Alex and the Nats.
"I noticed over the last few weeks and months," observed the would-be PM, "that there was a slight note not just of Anglophobia, but of Londonophobia in some of the rhetoric of our friends in the Scottish Nationalist Party". What could he mean?
"To listen to some of the London-bashing you might think that London was a modern Babylon with billionaires being plied with hot towels in the top-deck club class of their swanky new buses or guzzling pearls dissolved in vinegar while lolling back on the padded cushions of their hire bikes."
As the decadent images whizzed by, the Mayor declared that London was "going gangbusters", bringing in almost 17 million visitors last year and, thanks to "the wisdom of a clear majority of Scots" was still the capital of England, Britain and the United Kingdom "and will remain so for our lifetimes". Huzzah! But has he mentioned this to Nicola?
He held up a prop, a red brick, to underline the point of how London was awash with housebuilding; the city, he reported, was "sprouting with extraordinary growth like a speeded-up David Attenborough nature film about the return of spring to the Canadian tundra".
As he got the audience involved to give two fingers to Ukip and Nigel Farage, shouting No to the questions - "are there any quitters or splitters; anyone feeling a bit yellow around the edges like a kipper?" - the prospective Tory candidate for Uxbridge spoke of Europe and the promised referendum.
"That's our new fisheries policy, folks," he declared. "First, chuck Salmond overboard and then eat the (U)kippers for breakfast. We will fight them on the beaches of Clacton and of Rochester and Strood as well." Churchill couldn't have put it any better.
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