Toby Young Says Gissa Job Bozza

In the classic Goon Show episode The Histories Of Pliny The Elder, a minstrel grovelingly serenades Caesar (actually Hercules Grytpype-Thynne), who concludes “Brutus Moriartus, this man is a bit of a crawler. Why does he follow such a profession?” Moriartus replies “For money, Caesar. He tells me he wants to die rich”. Caesar approves. “And so he shall. Give him the sack of gold and strangle him”.

Now, I’m not advocating strangling anyone, and certainly not the loathsome Toby Young, but Tobes’ grovelling to our new Caesar today has been off the scale in its puke-making obsequiousness. Tobes has clearly seen a sign, and by the looks of it, it was a currency sign. London’s formerly very occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has jobs to give, and Tobes would rather like one, thank you very much.

So it was that Tobes rocked up on Victoria Derbyshire this morning to tell anyone not yet asleep “I’m incredibly optimistic. I was involved in the Leave campaign, I think that leaving the European Union will create huge opportunities for this country, and I’m really positive about Britain’s post-Brexit future, and the fact is, the person who has been Prime Minister for the past three years, hasn’t shared that optimism”.

There! All it needed was an optimistic feeling, and the Commons votes would have gone so differently. But do go on. “I think for all her rhetoric, she’s regarded Brexit as a disaster that has to be managed. That’s not Boris’ attitude. He believes in Brexit, he campaigned for Brexit, I think he should have been our Prime Minister three years ago, and I hope he can take up on the optimism and ebullience that he injected into that campaign”.

This was the most appalling horseshit. Tobes thought Bozza should have been PM, but just didn’t say so at the time. Also, Bozza only believed in Brexit because he was persuaded to believe in it. He had previously been more pro-Remain, despite his years of EU knocking in his legendarily dishonest Telegraph columns from Brussels.

A complete Muppet. And Elmo from Sesame Street

But this grovelfest was mild in comparison to that Tobes wrote for Quillette, where he tells “I first set eyes on Boris Johnson in the autumn of 1983 when we went up to Oxford at the same time … With his huge mop of blond hair, his tie askew and his shirt escaping from his trousers, he looked like an overgrown schoolboy. Yet with his imposing physical build, his thick neck and his broad, Germanic forehead, there was also something of Nietzsche’s Übermensch about him”. Oh, just fuck off Tobes. I mean … just fuck off.

Sadly, there was more. “In Boris, though, it was as if I’d finally encountered the ‘real’ Oxford, the Platonic ideal. While the rest of us were works-in-progress, vainly trying on different personae, Boris was the finished article. He was an instantly recognizable character from the comic tradition in English letters: a pantomime toff”. And more.

“My uncle had described him as a ‘genius’ and as a boy he’d been regarded as something of a wunderkind … At the prep school he attended before going to Eton, Britain’s grandest private school, he was seen as a prodigy … He was without doubt the biggest man on campus - the person most likely to succeed. He made no secret of his desire to be Prime Minister one day”. Enough! No more! The puke bucket is full to overflowing.

For Christ’s sake Bozza, give him a job. Any more of this will be hard to take.

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