Here lies the issue: Johnson called it “chats” casually had with journalists; saying it’s a privacy issue if a journalist then reported it. TOI calls it, by its own admission, a “free-wheeling chat” in the piece, but then says it also took place over several sessions, the implication being the conversations would have been on the record for them to have published it. It’s unsurprising that Johnson expressed his own dubiousness because the piece, with its colouful background of his blue T-shirt and white shorts, pins the interview down to one particular meeting, not a series of interactions.