Culture

Drop Everything And Behold Boris Johnson Explaining How He Makes Model Buses To Relax

This guy is likely to be the next Prime Minister of the UK.

by Sam Langford  27 June 2019
boris johnson

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The average Australian may not have heard of Boris Johnson, but trust us on this one: this video of the likely future Prime Minister of the UK is guaranteed to make your day. In an interview this week Johnson was asked what he does to kick back and relax, and his baffling, meandering answer about assembling model buses out of old wine crates was really, truly something.

Initially, Johnson simply told the interviewer that “I like to paint, or I make things”. A normal enough hobby. But when he was asked what exactly he makes, things gently spiralled out of control.

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“I have a thing where I make models of… I make buses,” he said. “Well, I don’t make models of buses — what I make is I get old wooden crates, and then I paint them.”

“Suppose it’s a box that’s been used to contain two wine bottles, and it will have a dividing thing. And I turn it into a bus, and I put passengers — I paint the passengers enjoying themselves on the wonderful bus. Low carbon, of a kind that we brought to the streets of London. Reducing CO2, reducing nitrous oxide, reducing pollution.”

That’s, uh, an extraordinary pivot, to say the least. Watch the clip below, it’s so much better coming from the horse’s mouth:

Naturally, people are divided on whether this is sincere. And look, it probably isn’t — see for example these comments Johnson made in 2013, where he said that if he was losing an argument he would simply throw a dead cat on the table, leading everyone to shout “jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table” instead of focusing on him losing the argument.

In this case, the bus is very much a dead cat — Johnson is losing plenty of arguments right now, and has plenty to avoid discussing.

Still, it was a wonderful bus while it lasted. What a trip. It’s not even Johnson’s first attempt at bus art, either — he’s improved so much over time.