Howard's turn of the screw hurts Johnson

You don't usually see massed ranks of Nikon-waving paparazzi and television crews with sound booms standing expectantly outside The Spectator's annual Parliamentarian of the Year Awards. The odd lobby hack from the serious newspapers, maybe, or the odd peer of the realm emerging from a taxi - but that's usually as exciting as it gets.

At lunchtime yesterday, the pavement outside Claridge's ballroom was dense with pullulating snappers. When asked if they were waiting for the Prime Minister or Gordon Brown, both former winners of the award, they replied scathingly: "Boris and Petsy".

Poor Boris Johnson and Petronella Wyatt, their names instantly immortalised in the national consciousness as a double-act. Ever since the Sunday Express "exclusively" claimed, five days ago, that Mr Johnson, The Spectator's charismatic and accident-prone editor, was about to resign from the Shadow Cabinet because of a "heavy workload" and "problems in his marriage", he and his former protegée have become the subject of fevered speculation.

As things turned out, Mr Johnson did not resign. He presided over the awards - the top prize was won by the Tory MP Sir Peter Tapsell - with the shy, blinking awkwardness of a myopic sheepdog, wholly eclipsed by his guest speaker and prize-distributor, the Tory leader Michael Howard.

The two men sat together at Table No 1, side by side but oddly apart, as though separated by an invisible force field.

The air was thick with rivalry and testosterone at the awards, attended by such figures as Lord Howe of Aberavon, the BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman and Sir David Frost.

Welcoming his political boss, Mr Johnson marvelled at how Mr Howard could "find time in his busy, multi-tasking day, to read Spectator editorials". Howard replied, to the surprise of many, with some ripe innuendoes. "There's nothing like the Spectator for stirring up controversy," he said. "In the best sense it could be described as political Viagra". His voice rising through a crescendo of lascivious emphases, he congratulated Johnson on the "tremendous enthusiasm with which you've approached your front-bench duties" (cries of "Oh!" and "Hurrah!" from the MPs) and said: "You're doing your job splendidly. Keep it up!"

The alleged affair between Mr Johnson and Ms Wyatt - which they have denied - was the latest in a string of scandals involving The Spectator. In August, the columnist Rod Liddell had a very public falling out with his wife, who went into print to denounce his shortcomings.

Then the pregnant publisher Kimberley Fortier was revealed to have had an affair with the Home Secretary, David Blunkett. Then came the infamous leader article which he dared to criticise the inhabitants of Liverpool for publicly grieving over the murdered hostage Ken Bigley; a furious Michael Howard upbraided his Minister for Culture and packed him off to Liverpool to apologise to the city fathers, a course of action that drew only a lot of abuse.

Thus Mr Howard's manner was teasing, as he brought up that débâcle, the pictures of Boris in cycling shorts and his inability to keep out of the news; but he had a streak of bullying in the levity. And in Mr Howard's incredulous yelp as his speech came to an end, there was an unspoken question: "How can you possibly stay in politics one minute longer, you dithering, skirt-chasing liability?"

Mrs Fortier spent most of the speech with a shocked hand covering her mouth. Mr Johnson seemed to shrink and disappear inside his baggy grey suit. Of Ms Wyatt, who was slated to sit at Table 11, there was no sign. Just another weird day in the emotional snake-pit of Spectatorland.