Matthew Norman: It wouldn't take long to tell us about your tax, Boris

Monday 05 March 2012 11:00 GMT
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Strike me pink, but with the London mayoral race too close to call, Boris Johnson only turned up on time for a BBC1 interview yesterday with Superinjunctor "Andy" Marr! He isn't always so punctual, and in the updated edition of her warmly recommended Just Boris (Aurum Press, £8.99), Sonia Purnell recalls how, having dithered in returning from holiday during last summer's riots, he pitched up half an hour late for a Cobra meeting at Number 10.

From this subtle power play, we may assume that Boris has contempt for David Cameron (to whom he has publicly referred, Purnell reveals, by the "c" word), believing he would make the better PM. Mr Marr did not challenge Boris's claim that "I very much doubt I will do a big political job" after the mayoralty with so much as a Paxovian raised eyebrow. Nor, when Boris expressed his wish to close all tax avoidance loopholes – a dream targeted at Ken Livingstone Inc, you suspect, and not at Rupert Murdoch – did that lethal interviewer ask the obvious.

Curiously, we have yet to hear from Boris's elfin lips that he pays income tax on all his colossal earnings, and always has. Here, as with self-promotional TV appointments, if not Cobra meetings, promptness is of the essence. One short sentence will suffice.

The mystery of Gove's emails

A more categorical denier of leadership ambition is Michael Gove, though perhaps he needn't have bothered. The Education Secretary is in potentially career-ending strife over his advisors' use of private email accounts in execution of his public duties, and the deletion of many emails before they could be examined.

When Alastair Campbell, of all Whitehall traditionalists, blogs a rebuke for bypassing Civil Service procedure, things begin to look bleak. Still, great to see former Times executive Govey importing News International email etiquette to government. You can take the boy out of Wapping...

Davy Jones and

his namesake

An even more startling Mail confession comes from Liz Jones. The queen-empress of solipsistic sanity relates how, at the age of 8, she experienced literal, physical lust for that newly deceased Monkee, Davy Jones.

"My oldest sister says I'd described watching Davy as 'like standing on the beach at Frinton, the tide tugging at my toes'," she writes, appending a "Whoosh" to hint at underage orgasm.

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