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| Hold your nose – Boris Johnson is trying to meme himself | Hold your nose – Boris Johnson is trying to meme himself |
| (about 5 hours later) | |
| Brace yourselves, voters. When the Actual Prime Minister appears in a Vogue knock-off video, worse is to come, says columnist Joel Golby | |
| Ah, I suppose this was always doomed to happen, wasn’t it. For years we’ve been training ourselves to speak the language of the internet until it became something close to our mother tongue, and all those basic little toddler sounds we used to make – All Your Base Are Belong To Us, longcat is long, Badger Badger Mushroom – are now a whole meme-as-language that worms through our brains like a parasite. | Ah, I suppose this was always doomed to happen, wasn’t it. For years we’ve been training ourselves to speak the language of the internet until it became something close to our mother tongue, and all those basic little toddler sounds we used to make – All Your Base Are Belong To Us, longcat is long, Badger Badger Mushroom – are now a whole meme-as-language that worms through our brains like a parasite. |
| So when Boris Johnson marches out of a fire escape in soft focus and gets interrogated sight unseen, then you know what it is, don’t you, it’s a knock-off of Vogue’s 73 Questions, but with the Actual Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in it instead of, say, Selena Gomez. | So when Boris Johnson marches out of a fire escape in soft focus and gets interrogated sight unseen, then you know what it is, don’t you, it’s a knock-off of Vogue’s 73 Questions, but with the Actual Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in it instead of, say, Selena Gomez. |
| I first paused at 0:13, and had to go outside and hold the bridge of my nose for a while before I could go back to it. See if you can last any longer, but be aware that there are no prizes for doing so. | I first paused at 0:13, and had to go outside and hold the bridge of my nose for a while before I could go back to it. See if you can last any longer, but be aware that there are no prizes for doing so. |
| Insights gleaned: Boris Johnson starts his day by taking his dog for a shit; he can’t get Thai curry ordered to No 10 any more in case someone runs “Michael Winner interference” on it first; he segued directly from the question “fish and chips or Sunday roast?” to “why are we having this election?” without blinking; his favourite band is either the Clash or the Rolling Stones. | Insights gleaned: Boris Johnson starts his day by taking his dog for a shit; he can’t get Thai curry ordered to No 10 any more in case someone runs “Michael Winner interference” on it first; he segued directly from the question “fish and chips or Sunday roast?” to “why are we having this election?” without blinking; his favourite band is either the Clash or the Rolling Stones. |
| Admittedly I might be still in conspiracy mode because of BBC #Wreathgate earlier this week but, judging by the timing, the calamitous pauses, the way Johnson responds as if grappling with a satellite delay, plus the contrasting audio qualities, and I’m pretty certain the voice asking the questions was overdubbed to make it lean working-class. I mean, that can’t be true, can it? That can’t be what’s happened, here. It just really, really feels like that’s what’s happened. | Admittedly I might be still in conspiracy mode because of BBC #Wreathgate earlier this week but, judging by the timing, the calamitous pauses, the way Johnson responds as if grappling with a satellite delay, plus the contrasting audio qualities, and I’m pretty certain the voice asking the questions was overdubbed to make it lean working-class. I mean, that can’t be true, can it? That can’t be what’s happened, here. It just really, really feels like that’s what’s happened. |
| Oh god, it’s still going: he likes Marmite, he made steak and oven chips last night, he can still make broad-sweeping arm gestures and talk about Brexit while loitering in the corridor by the office toilets. Workers behind him stare rigidly at computers as if they’ve had to patiently act as human furniture in multiple takes as a production team walks backwards through their campaign office asking Boris Johnson about referendums. He makes tea like this: boiling water tap, milk in with the bag, no stirring, no taking the bag out. From that alone, I have seen into the very soul of the man, and I’m not sure I liked it. | Oh god, it’s still going: he likes Marmite, he made steak and oven chips last night, he can still make broad-sweeping arm gestures and talk about Brexit while loitering in the corridor by the office toilets. Workers behind him stare rigidly at computers as if they’ve had to patiently act as human furniture in multiple takes as a production team walks backwards through their campaign office asking Boris Johnson about referendums. He makes tea like this: boiling water tap, milk in with the bag, no stirring, no taking the bag out. From that alone, I have seen into the very soul of the man, and I’m not sure I liked it. |
| But this is, to be fair, taking keen advantage of Johnson’s strength, which is that he’s an assured public speaker who nevertheless always seems on the edge of saying “pimbly pombly”, and who somehow convinces swaths of the voting public that he’s Just Like You because he stutters occasionally, and knows what a microwave is. Compare and contrast Theresa May’s one attempt at seeming human (remember when she confessed, as if admitting to a string of murders, about lightly tamping down some wheat) and he’s light years ahead. He softballed NHS investment policy, his manifesto on police spending and Tough Brexit Talk into a fun video about Marmite and shitting dogs. He’s played an absolute blinder. | But this is, to be fair, taking keen advantage of Johnson’s strength, which is that he’s an assured public speaker who nevertheless always seems on the edge of saying “pimbly pombly”, and who somehow convinces swaths of the voting public that he’s Just Like You because he stutters occasionally, and knows what a microwave is. Compare and contrast Theresa May’s one attempt at seeming human (remember when she confessed, as if admitting to a string of murders, about lightly tamping down some wheat) and he’s light years ahead. He softballed NHS investment policy, his manifesto on police spending and Tough Brexit Talk into a fun video about Marmite and shitting dogs. He’s played an absolute blinder. |
| For those paying attention at the back, you’ll know that this now puts pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to come out fighting with his own internet-adjacent video that co-opts the visual language of the youth and tricks them into caring about inclusive ownership funds. I’m intrigued to see where Labour HQ goes with it. | For those paying attention at the back, you’ll know that this now puts pressure on Jeremy Corbyn to come out fighting with his own internet-adjacent video that co-opts the visual language of the youth and tricks them into caring about inclusive ownership funds. I’m intrigued to see where Labour HQ goes with it. |
| Best I can see it is this: Jeremy Corbyn eats a succession of increasingly spicy cauliflower hot wings opposite a nodding Owen Jones, frantically sweating through his jumper while trying to talk about nurses’ wages; Corbyn delivers the entire Labour manifesto as a 45-minute ASMR roleplay (“[ASMR] – PM Roleplay – You Are The Workers & I Am Ending Austerity”). Or – my personal preference – Corbyn waving to a camera mounted inside a ringlight and letting a 22-year-old makeup vlogger give him a makeover: full face, full lashes. Blows a big mwah at the end as a “Register To Vote!” call to action drops on screen. And this is all way before Jo Swinson gets on TikTok. The race to the bottom starts now. | Best I can see it is this: Jeremy Corbyn eats a succession of increasingly spicy cauliflower hot wings opposite a nodding Owen Jones, frantically sweating through his jumper while trying to talk about nurses’ wages; Corbyn delivers the entire Labour manifesto as a 45-minute ASMR roleplay (“[ASMR] – PM Roleplay – You Are The Workers & I Am Ending Austerity”). Or – my personal preference – Corbyn waving to a camera mounted inside a ringlight and letting a 22-year-old makeup vlogger give him a makeover: full face, full lashes. Blows a big mwah at the end as a “Register To Vote!” call to action drops on screen. And this is all way before Jo Swinson gets on TikTok. The race to the bottom starts now. |
| Other things to hate or enjoy – delete as appropriate | Other things to hate or enjoy – delete as appropriate |
| Unlikely anyone’s said this before, but I think Matt Hancock might be one to watch this election cycle – he seems to have taken the selfie video cue from Rory Stewart’s leadership campaign (Stewart looking increasingly terrified as he shook hands with members of the public and offered anyone hard enough out for a debate in the middle of Kew Gardens) and run with it. This week’s video – an unblinking 11-second performance in which he threatens to tell Southampton about NHS investment with the uneasy air of someone being forced to recount his kind treatment at the hands of his captors – is still dwarfed by last week’s attempt (Hancock, in the blustering dawn cold, saying, “It’s Yorkshire, it’s before seven in the morning, it’s raining ... and we’re ready to go!”, like a failed Top Gear presenter open audition reel), but I think we’ll have plenty more efforts from him before 12 December looms. | Unlikely anyone’s said this before, but I think Matt Hancock might be one to watch this election cycle – he seems to have taken the selfie video cue from Rory Stewart’s leadership campaign (Stewart looking increasingly terrified as he shook hands with members of the public and offered anyone hard enough out for a debate in the middle of Kew Gardens) and run with it. This week’s video – an unblinking 11-second performance in which he threatens to tell Southampton about NHS investment with the uneasy air of someone being forced to recount his kind treatment at the hands of his captors – is still dwarfed by last week’s attempt (Hancock, in the blustering dawn cold, saying, “It’s Yorkshire, it’s before seven in the morning, it’s raining ... and we’re ready to go!”, like a failed Top Gear presenter open audition reel), but I think we’ll have plenty more efforts from him before 12 December looms. |
| Mike Gapes – the man with the defeated air of someone who has been turned away from a city centre Laser Quest because “you can’t play on your own here, mate, that’s weird” – has released his campaign poster this week, which is basically just a red and yellow Labour campaign poster with a small disclaimer at the bottom to remind voters that he defected to the party now known as “The Independent Group For Change”, remember, and also a bizarrely heartbreaking call to arms in the top right corner, reading: “It will really help me if you display this poster in your window. Thank you.” I don’t know why, but the polite, thin, desperation of this actually makes me weepingly sad. Gapes, politely asking that you display his campaign poster in your window, thanks, for as long as it takes for someone to report him for misrepresentation to the Electoral Commission and he sadly has to go round all the shops and houses in Ilford, and ask that they take them down. | Mike Gapes – the man with the defeated air of someone who has been turned away from a city centre Laser Quest because “you can’t play on your own here, mate, that’s weird” – has released his campaign poster this week, which is basically just a red and yellow Labour campaign poster with a small disclaimer at the bottom to remind voters that he defected to the party now known as “The Independent Group For Change”, remember, and also a bizarrely heartbreaking call to arms in the top right corner, reading: “It will really help me if you display this poster in your window. Thank you.” I don’t know why, but the polite, thin, desperation of this actually makes me weepingly sad. Gapes, politely asking that you display his campaign poster in your window, thanks, for as long as it takes for someone to report him for misrepresentation to the Electoral Commission and he sadly has to go round all the shops and houses in Ilford, and ask that they take them down. |
| • Joel Golby is the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant | • Joel Golby is the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant |
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