Tory frontrunner tells interviewer he relaxes by making and painting model buses out of wooden wine boxes

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The internet has been scratching its collective head after Boris Johnson’s bizarre comment in an interview that to relax he crafts and paints model buses, an answer one political scientist called “so bizarre that it’s mesmerising”.

Speaking on Talk Radio on Tuesday, the frontrunner to replace Theresa May was asked by the interviewer, Ross Kempsell, what he did to relax.

Johnson replied: “I like to paint. Or I make things. I have a thing where I make models of buses. What I make is, I get old, I don’t know, wooden crates, and I paint them. It’s a box that’s been used to contain two wine bottles, right, and it will have a dividing thing. And I turn it into a bus.

“So I put passengers – I paint the passengers enjoying themselves on a wonderful bus – low carbon, of the kind that we brought to the streets of London, reducing C0 2 , reducing nitrous oxide, reducing pollution.”

Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) This is truly weird. Boris Johnson, likely the next Prime Minister of the UK, gets asked what he likes to do in his free time, to relax. Watch what he says...it's so bizarre that it's mesmerizing. Via @talkRADIO pic.twitter.com/aXp5hmCMVg

Matt Bevan 🎙 (@MatthewBevan) I have thought about this a lot and I have realised that this is exactly how my 3yo son would answer this question. pic.twitter.com/LgWX2C3OOo

Some people on social media put forward the theory that Johnson’s claims might not be entirely based in truth.

emily bell (@emilybell) I think we know by now what Boris Johnson does to relax , and it’s not painting bus passengers on wine boxes https://t.co/OudNvgnEtA

Others suggested the story was a sign of Johnson’s feeling of entitlement, a sense that he feels he can say whatever he wants, no matter how absurd or questionable and get away with it. One wondered: is Johnson’s “most basic faculty deserting him?”

Simon Blackwell (@simonblackwell) Only just caught up with the Boris Johnson model bus interview. Feels like a screw-you status thing - “I can literally say any old unbelievable shit and still become PM.” Like Trump’s “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Several people speculated as to whether campaign internswere now frantically building model buses in case they were asked to produce proof of Johnson’s hobby.

“Boris and his girlfriend have been up all night painting bus models and then knocking them around a bit to make them look old,” said Australian journalist Matt Bevan.

Séamas It Ever Was (@shockproofbeats) This is an open offer to any of the poorly paid interns within Boris Johnson's media team: I will pay you cold, hard cash for a screenshot of the text, email or WhatsApp message which demanded you start making demented little winebox bus art projects.

As historian and author Greg Jenner noted, this is not the first time Johnson’s name has been linked to bus art. A sketch of a London bus by Boris Johnson raised £1,000 in a charity auction earlier this year.

Greg Jenner (@greg_jenner) Ah, noted bus artist Boris Johnson has form pic.twitter.com/8xW5EmexKO

While Johnson was trying to draw a connection between his hobby and the buses he introduced to London during his tenure as mayor, others found a stronger link with another sort of bus: those painted with Brexit campaign slogans, which Johnson was pictured with so often during the lead-up to the EU referendum.

BBC presenter Simon McCoy speaking after the clip was broadcast, quipped: “Wonder what he writes on the side of it”.