THERE has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the near inevitability of Boris Johnson becoming prime minister next week. And I admit to providing my own share of the wailing: he’s unreliable, dishonest, doesn’t know his GATT 24 from his VAT 69.

But I have a confession to make. Secretly, part of me is rather looking forward to seeing Boris in Number Ten. Just think of the stories he’ll generate.

Donald Trump was the unlikely saviour of troubled broadsheet papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times. Such was the controversy he generated after 2016 that their circulations jumped overnight. Newspaper editors in the UK too must quietly be saying: bring it on.

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Boris Johnson is the first divorced man with a live-in lover to occupy the hallowed address, that’s if his relationship with Carrie Symonds survives the transition. No doubt the Number Ten staff are already considering the potential for wine spillage and busily removing white sofas.

It is, by all accounts, a tempestuous relationship, so they might have an eye to the safety of the crockery too – as well as counting the spoons after visitations from some of Mr Johnson’s more louche contacts. Vladimir Putin will already have the place bugged, of course, even if the neighbours haven’t, so we can expect verbatim transcripts of their domestic discourse appearing on Wikileaks.

Boris Johnson is often portrayed as a right-wing demagogue, and even a crypto fascist, but he more resembles a figure from English comic fiction, like Bertie Wooster, or the hapless hack, William Boot, from Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop. He is always getting into “scrapes”.

Like “Guppygate”, when Boris Johnson appeared to assist a public school pal, Darius Guppy, in a plot to have a journalist beaten up. Nothing happened of course; it was 29 years ago; and, you know, he wasn’t serious.

We can assume Johnson will try to keep what he once called his “phallocentric phallus” zipped up for the duration. The paparazzi will be on Boris watch 24/7 looking for indiscretions.

Indiscretion is practically Boris’s middle name, and it is a sign of how much the UK Conservative Party has changed that it seems so enthusiastic about having this man as its leader. In the past, when it was regarded as a secular branch of the Anglican Church, Boris Johnson’s promiscuous ways might have excluded him from even becoming a Tory MP.

In a curious reversal of roles, it is now the Left, in papers like The Guardian, that have been condemning Boris Johnson for “moral turpitude” and disrespecting women. They’re constantly on the lookout for examples of what he himself calls his “political incorrectitude”. They surely won’t have to wait very long. Whatever else they do, Number Ten spin doctors will be unable to zip up Boris Johnson’s mouth.

He arrives in Number Ten with a compendium of bon mots, risqué remarks, offensive similes and colourful asides – often about himself. He once said that his chances of becoming PM were “about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive”.

After being sacked as a junior minister some years ago he said: “I have discovered that there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters”. Sounds like he’s written his own epitaph before entering office. Boris is a disaster magnet, and he is taking over the ship of state just as it is about to collide with the Brexit deadline.

His encounters with world leaders will be so eccentric even Private Eye will have trouble parodying them. Mr Johnson’s first official visit as PM is expected to be to Washington, to bend the knee to Donald Trump, another cartoon character who has found himself running the most powerful nation on earth. The body language alone will be hilarious. Will they man hug? Will Trump be able to make sense of Boris’s plummy accent and his inability to finish a sentence? Perhaps the perplexed POTUS will tell Mr Johnson to go back to his country of origin and sort out the chaos there.

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Then, he will have to meet Emanuel Macron, the French President, and the leading anti-Brexit figure in the European Union. This will be a grudge match. You can almost hear Boris practising insults in Norman French. He is making clear that the Irish Backstop has to be removed if there is to be a Withdrawal Agreement. This should make his early meetings with the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar tense to say the least.

But the encounter everyone in the Scottish media is looking forward to is with Nicola Sturgeon. The First Minister regards the future Prime Minister as a “racist” and has little time for his attitude to women. He has ruled out any referendum on Scottish independence and announced that he is to be styled “minister for the Union”. This should make for interesting chemistry.

Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May got on surprisingly well, at least at the start of the latter’s premiership. They compared notes as women who had reached the top in a man’s world. There’ll be few pleasantries this time. The two leaders are liable to end up condemning each other as narrow nationalists and retreating into their respective bunkers.

As for Brussels, they’ve already given Boris Johnson’s outrider, the Brexit Secretary, Steve Barclay, the diplomatic equivalent of the bum’s rush for his tentative proposal to skip a Withdrawal Agreement and start negotiating a free trade deal right away. Boris Johnson may have to work his charm on a flinty new Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, the former German defence minister. Or not, as the case may be.

Prepare then for an epic confrontation as parliament seeks to prevent Boris Johnson pursuing a No Deal Brexit in October. It could lead to confrontation with the Queen herself if he tries to sideline parliament. Then the inevitable general election, and a whole new political landscape as the established parties fracture.

The headlines will just keep on coming. A bonanza of gaffes, quotes and crises. And yes, I know it’s a tragedy for the country, and Europe. But part of me can’t wait.