Boris Johnson has just spoken on one of the most bizarre interviews I have ever seen (Other than anything Donald Trump has been interviewed in). In the video for talkRADIO, the Prime Ministerial hopeful starts with rapid and natural responses to all the questions fired at him. But then he is asked:
“What do you do to relax, what do you do to switch off?”
Boris Johnson’s clumsy and delayed response, as he stares into the distance, almost trying to remember something difficult, goes like this:
“I, I, I like to, paint… erm, oh, I make things… I like to…”
To which the interviewer prompts
“What do you make?”
Before Johnson, still staring away from the interviewer and now being rather pensive in an until now rather uncharacteristic manner continues…
“I make…” [BIG PAUSE…] “I have a thing where I make models of, I mean when I was in like mayor of London we build a beautiful, I make buses..”
Interviewer: “You make models of buses?”
Johnson: “I make models of buses.”
Boris Johnson then goes on to detail how he supposedly makes models of buses out of “I get old, I don’t know, old wooden crates…” and then paints them (Wooden wine boxes) with happy passengers “…enjoying themselves on the wonderful bus, low carbon, of the type we brought to the streets of London…”
Change of Character
The oddest thing about this video is that Johnson’s whole approach to the interviewer changes. At first he’s direct and very animated, knowing exactly what needs to be said and firing off answers very naturally.
But by the six minute mark, the question of what does Boris like to do in his spare time, he becomes extremely pensive. so deeply considering his answers that it’s almost as if he’s another person or that he’s in territory where he’s no longer recalling answers to the questioning, but having to perform the mental gymnastics of having to make things up.
The Boris Bus Conundrum
The really odd thing about all this is that if you Google “boris bus” you get stories about the infamous Brexit bus from the Vote Leave 2016 campaign where a slogan on its side said:
“We send the EU £350 million a week
Let’s fund our NHS instead”
Boris Johnson was a big part of pushing the campaign, which was so misleading, that it was challenged in court. Faced with multiple allegations of misconduct in public office, only last month.
So why is Boris Johnson talking about “making buses out of wooden crates”? Is it to salt the search engines so that all future results for “boris bus” ` no longer point to the dubious Brexit claims on that bus? Is this a clever ruse? Are we witnessing the skills of Boris Johnson, SEO master?
This is quite honestly such a strange interview that the only reasonable answer to why he has said such things about Boris + bus is to deflect the algorithm away from search results that he would rather not be associated with.
Clever, aye?
We may never know the real reason why he said he paints wooden crates to look like buses, but it really is so peculiar that our speculative reason is the best one for now.
Anyway, here’s the YouTube video, starting at the point where Johnson is asked the Boris bus question… Enjoy!
Boris Johnson SEO. No…!
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