subscribe
/ Sign Out

The five areas of Boris Johnson's life we're dying to know about that his memoir will tactfully avoid

BORIS Johnson has seen how many books Prince Harry has sold and announced his tell-all memoir. It will skirt around these key areas: 

How many children has he got? 

The siring antics of the former PM, as fertile as a sink estate, are more intricate than the family trees in fantasy novels. No casual reader can constantly flick back to that web of sexual dalliances so they’ll be cut for the sake of clarity. His child count will remain ‘at least seven’. Wilfred might make a cameo if Johnson needs sympathy or to hit the word count.

What did he get up to with the Bullingdon Club? 

Johnson plans to write a ‘prime ministerial memoir like no other’, so getting pissed and coked up to trash restaurants, paying for thousands in damages from the family’s petty cash drawer, is out because David Cameron’s already done it. Expect endless paragraphs of self-aggrandizing waffle written in Latin instead.

Did Carrie really get caught doing that? 

The memoir of a high-profile narcissist who hates to be upstaged will hardly include a starring role for his current wife, let alone unsavoury details about the act of love that made Gavin Williamson a Sir. Carrie will be a footnote at best apart from when she’s given full blame for the wallpaper.

How many parties were there in Christmas 2020? 

This brief non-episode of Johnson’s life has already been covered by Sue Grey’s highly redacted report so why rehash what the public already knows? The omission has no connection to the ongoing inquiry by the Commons Privileges Committee. It’s simply that Christmas 2020 was a very dull time and nothing really happened then.

What were his great achievements in office? 

Left out not because there weren’t any but because they’re such a familiar part of our everyday life that it would be stating the obvious. Just look out of the window and you’ll see the marvellous post-Brexit Britain Johnson has bequeathed to us. Asserting his vital role in creating this utopia is like saying the sky is blue and the grass green. Plus listing them would take up so much room he’d barely be able to compare himself to Churchill.

The six stages of having to print some f**king thing out

YOUR printer hates you but you need a hard copy of your boarding pass. These are the six stages of misery you’ll go through to get it: 

Stage one: set it up

Used infrequently and hidden away, its plug socket stolen by a charger, you’ll need to find your printer and clear space to balance it on a table and bring it back to life. Feel your tension build as it clunks and whines ominously while trying to remember what it is, what it does and why it’s so angry at you.

Stage two: get it connected

A simple cable connecting to your laptop? So 00s. Now you have to establish a wifi connection while inputting your password using cursors on an LCD screen. You do this with the PDF of the manual open on your phone, and are rewarded by the printer downloading a firmware update.

Stage three: print

Your chest’s tightening and your eyeballs have a pulse. You press print and nothing happens. You do it again. And again. Now there are six jobs in the queue. You are informed there’s no black ink. You chose to combine colours and whimper ‘thank God’ as the machine stirs into action, printing in a mere 23 minutes.

Stage four: disappointment

Your one-page document is spread over four sheets of A4, printed in a convivial brown. Trying to piece it together achieves nothing. You did not choose this format or want to print those characters. The urge to tie the printer to your car’s back bumper and take it for a little drive resurfaces.

Stage five: repeat the cycle

Swallowing your fury, you begin the process from step three, with each new print sending you back to uncheck boxes like ‘A3 paper’, ‘400% magnification’, and ‘print on both sides’. You format a new document, entitled: “Die, printer, die!’

Stage six: wait for a teenager

It still won’t f**king print. The plane leaves in two hours and 40 minutes. Your teenager arrives, munching a cereal bar and asks why the printer’s out. They fiddle with their phone, nonchalantly replace the empty black ink cartridge and press print. 13 copies print perfectly.

Next story ›