Continuing our series of articles by the much-loved TCW writer Nick Booth, who died in September. It was first published on October 4, 2020. You can read Kathy’s introduction here.
DEAR Conservative Woman Readers,
I’ve been taken in by a cad that everyone warned me about.
I thought his good qualities would prevail, but I’ve been proved wrong – and my friends are saying they told me so.
I feel such a fool. Where do I go from here?
I know you are small c conservative people and neither sanctimonious or judgemental. We all make mistakes. Half of you seem to have been youthful socialists, so I’m hoping you will understand anyone who has been taken in by sentiment and manipulated by broken promises.
Advice puh-lease!
Before any interlopers fill the comments box with a screen full of scorn, please let me explain myself.
I fell for Boris because he was so eloquent, charming and intelligent.
Looking back, he was playing a fiendishly cunning trick by being happy. Anyone with an ounce of joie de vivre will stand out like a beacon among Britain’s miserable media munchkins.
Boris lit up Have I Got Gloom for You just by refusing to be miserable. In that light you can’t help but like him. I was blinded by the contrast between him and the other pessimistic pundits.
Then someone pointed out that Boris was not his real name. But that just made me like ‘Alex’ even more.
It’s not my fault I was taken in. It’s the critics. Many of the people ganging up on him were such appalling specimens that you’d sympathise with anyone who was a target of their bitterness.
A classics scholar, his intelligence was often criticised by people who could only make a living as comics. Boris went to Oxford, and they flunked out of clown school.
Then public schoolboys such as James O’Brien criticised him for . . . attending a public school. At least Boris made the most of his opportunity and shares his knowledge. Each mysterious classical reference from Boris has me scurrying across cyberspace in search of its meaning.
In his books, his columns and on BBC2 Boris widened our perspective of history. Narrow-minded Eridans like OJ – The Owenly Child – Jones just want to be on the right side of hysteria.
The ingratitude of these people is incredible. Few realise that without Boris they would have no jobs.
Boris is the patron of the BBC’s Witless Protection Programme, which creates jobs for the satirically challenged and allows them to call themselves comics. Funnelling billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the BBC Comedy Department is not enough. They need some news on which to base their ‘topical humour’. Without Boris, there is nothing to point their myopic views at. Sadly, the gag writers for The Mash Report, The Now Show and The News Quiz can think of nothing funny about the continent they profess to be passionate about.
Boris, by contrast, lives a full life, too full a life it turns out. But sneering at his achievements creates employment for society’s Nish Kumars.
Their small-mindedness is infectious though. The grim negativity of these critics blinded me to Boris’s failings. He’s still a magnificent force of nature – but you wouldn’t want him running a china shop.
But after recent events too painful to talk about the scales have fallen from my eyes and I’m seeing the world as it really is.
Should we break it off? How?
How can I be less gullible when choosing the next leader?
Is there anybody decent out there?
Advice please.
Yours tearfully
Lockdown Ginger
Croydon