Throughout the Tory leadership campaign, journalists have been up in arms about Boris Johnson’s attempts to dodge media scrutiny.
From missing key TV debates to sending out Tory MPs to be interviewed on his behalf, the wannabe PM has vexed reporters up and down the country.
But maybe it was for the best...
Because on Monday, when he finally started to talk to journalists, things got a bit weird.
TalkRadio’s politics editor Ross Kempsell was forced to endure a truly bizarre and dragged-out anecdote from Johnson about how he makes models of buses. (Yes, really.)
Asked what he does in his spare time, the man who is likely to become our next prime minister said: “I get, I get old, um, wooden crates, right? And I paint them and they have to contain two wine bottles. And it will have a dividing thing.
“And I turn it into a bus and I put passengers... you really want to do this?” Johnson continued, later adding that he also “paints the passengers enjoying themselves”.
Wow. And we thought Theresa May’s admission one of her favourite hobbies was making food… and eating it was weird enough.
As you might have guessed, people had a *lot* of thoughts about Johnson’s apparent hobby...
Given Johnson’s track record with buses, you think he might want to avoid the subject...
Johnson was faced with a court case earlier this year over the claim – which was printed on the side of the Vote Leave bus during the EU referendum campaign – that £350 million a week would be pumped into the NHS rather than the EU if the UK voted to leave.
However, the case – which accused Johnson of misleading the public – was thrown out.
Then there were the Routemaster buses he vowed to re-introduced to London as part of his campaign to become London mayor. They may have been nicknamed the ‘Boris bus’, but they were also pretty expensive – around £355,000 each.
Dubbed the “most expensive buses in the world” by Sadiq Khan, the next mayor of London announced in 2017 that Transport for London would not be purchasing any more Routemasters.