This hasn’t been the best of weeks for the foreign secretary. First he got caught out comparing Northern Ireland to London’s congestion charge zone. Then a letter he wrote to the prime minister suggesting a hard border was a price worth paying for Brexit got leaked to Sky News.

Now he had to face the Greater London Authority’s oversight committee to explain why, when he was London mayor, he had wasted the best part of £40m on a garden bridge project for the Thames that never got built. There’s a growing sense the past is beginning to catch up with him. The noose is tightening and there will be a reckoning to be paid.

Boris Johnson was a few minutes late for the session, which allowed several committee members to be overheard discussing whether he would be a suitable contestant for the TV dating show Take Me Out. The committee chair, Len Duvall, hurriedly reminded everyone that their microphones were on and the session was being broadcast so they might want to be careful about what they were saying. “That Boris Johnson is a brilliant chap,” said another member sarcastically.

Once the foreign secretary was in place, Duvall laid out the line of questioning. How there had been serious irregularities in the tendering and procurement process, with the former mayor appearing to have clearly backed one bid right from the start, and how public money had been poured into the project even when it was clear it was in serious difficulties as the necessary land had not even been acquired nor planning conditions met.

“May I say what a pleasure it is to be back here,” said Boris. Duvall quickly reminded him that it can’t have been that much of a pleasure as he had resisted all previous attempts to get him to explain his actions while in office, and that the only reason he was here today was because he had received a formal legal summons.

Boris shrugged. Whatever. The truth is a moving target for the foreign secretary and he would rather believe he had come under his own volition. “I take these proceedings very seriously,” he said. But he didn’t. He really didn’t. He treated them in the same way as he treats most things. As a joke. Apart from anything else he couldn’t really see what the problem was. To him £40m of public money is neither here nor there. It’s chicken feed. Money that can be conjured out of the public purse to feed his own fantasies.

Time and again, the committee would try to get Boris to focus on the details. “All the evidence that we have contradicts the version of events you are giving,” Duvall interrupted. Boris took no notice. This may have been a GLA oversight committee, but it was his show. Everything always is for Boris. He is his own one-man reality show. A real-life version of the Truman Show. The Johnson Show, with everyone else bit part players, orbiting his sun like satellites.

So he just rambled on, resisting all attempts to silence him. For Boris, the real tragedy wasn’t that the money had been wasted but that more hadn’t been spent. If only Sadiq Khan hadn’t pulled the plug on a scheme that would rival his disused cable-car crossing, then London would have had a landmark bridge to make it the envy of the entire galaxy.

The normal rules of engagement didn’t apply for visionaries like him. Sure a few corners might have been cut, but that was all for the benefit of a glorious future that small-minded bureaucrats like the committee couldn’t begin to comprehend. The world should be thanking him, not questioning him. Besides, he had so much more to give than a piddling garden bridge. What he really wanted was to build a bridge across the Channel.

Vanity, thy name is Boris. Look on my works ye mighty and despair.