Statement on The Spectator article
From Boris Johnson – sent to the Liverpool Daily Post this morning
It is quite an education to be at the centre of one of these sudden media firestorms: the cameras on the doorstep, the phone ringing off the hook, the endless requests for interviews, the shouted abuse.
By Saturday morning my poor Commons secretary was so overcome by the avalanche of electronic hate mail that she had to retire to her bed. And yet I can’t really pretend to be surprised.
We had a firestorm because we had an editorial in the magazine that was frankly incendiary, and I have no one to blame but myself.
I am the editor. I put it there. I must now take responsibility for enraging my party leader, alienating the people of a great city, and incurring the anger of not a few of The Spectator’s readers.
What on earth was I thinking of?
How could I possibly have approved an attack on Liverpool?
SOS
Re: The Spectator editorial out today
Boris is very sorry as he certainly didn’t mean to offend anybody.
We will come back to you asap.
Unbend the truth like Beckham, Tony
*Bloggers* I am greatly heartened by your support. Here is my column:
To call it genius, frankly, is putting it mildly. When the nation sank back on the sofa last Saturday afternoon, and everyone rubbed the eye that had been accidentally punched by his neighbour’s gesticulation, and when the screams of delight had died away, we were left to contemplate the mental processes by which David Beckham, 29, was able to slot that second goal into the back of the Welsh net.
The rest of the animal kingdom must bow before him, because there is nothing else like it in nature. No dolphin jumping for a ball; no monkey hurling a nut; no archer fish catching a fly with his sputum dart – no other species can solve such a complicated, three-dimensional problem with such speed, and, of our own species, Beckham is the supreme exponent.
He was five or six yards outside the penalty box to the left; Welsh defenders were lunging at him, and yet – in a trice – he had sized up exactly how to strike that laminated sphere so that it moved in a gorgeous, uninterruptible parabola, describing the entire hypotenuse of the box, and arriving with such speed in the top right hand square foot of the goal that it left the keeper’s fingers flapping as uselessly as a dying butterfly.
Any biologist would be bound to concede that this was the human brain at its finest and most efficient.
He would also have to say, however, that there seem to be different types of cleverness; because if Beckham is in some ways cleverer than the cleverest rat or squirrel, he seems in other respects to be a few apples short of a picnic.
Autumn Flu
Hello
Just had to let you know that I am stifling a most horrendous flu – post conference and Autumn side-effects no doubt.
Any tips for the speediest recovery?
Boris
Party Conference Photos 04
William Hague
Download file
Politicians v Journalists Quiz
Download file
Daily Telegraph Debate
Download file
Sandra Howard
Download file
Michael Ancram
Download file
Michael Portillo
Download file
Bill Deedes
Download file
