Flying too high? Boris Johnson’s biggest on-screen gaffes

Boris Johnson is set to join GB News, in his first formal job as a TV presenter. But the former prime minister has long been a star of the small screen, famed for his cringe-worthy on-camera gaffes.

As a politician, Johnson was often loose with the facts and vague on matters of policy. But even when appearing to act (if he was indeed acting) the clown, he had a genius for lodging himself in the public consciousness. Despite the litany of missteps that marked his time in politics, he had a knack for getting the public to laugh with, rather than at, him. Here are some of his more memorable moments on screen.

Arguably the show that launched Johnson’s career. He appeared three times as a panellist from 1998 to 2001, and proved so popular that he hosted the show four times between 2002 and 2006. During his early appearances, Johnson, then a newspaper columnist, was mercilessly mocked by Ian Hislop and co. But Johnson showed an ability to respond to put-downs with a slightly knowing grin, letting the audience know that he was in on the joke – a vital part of his political appeal.

The zipwire

Ed Miliband’s reputation took a severe dent when he was snapped awkwardly eating a bacon sandwich. Johnson, in contrast, got stuck on a zipwire while holding a pair of union flags and, once again, managed to get the public to laugh along with him. Then mayor of London, Johnson used the stunt, which most politicians’ PR aides would have warned against, to mark Team GB’s first gold medal at the capital’s 2012 Olympic Games. An issue with the wire meant he stopped moving, and spent some time dangling in mid-air before being rescued.

The squashed child

Much like the zipwire fiasco, knocking over a 10-year-old boy in a rush to score a rugby try while on a trade mission to Tokyo is generally not a good look for a politician. Johnson was lucky in this case that Toki Sekiguchi, who he shoulder-barged to the ground in what was supposed to be a playful game of street rugby, was unhurt. The child insisted, somewhat implausibly, that meeting the London mayor had nonetheless been “enjoyable”.

Kipling in the temple

As Johnson’s political career ascended, his inherent tendency towards what supporters called being playful, and critics termed habitual glibness, became more of a hazard. In 2017, as foreign secretary, he was accused of “incredible insensitivity” when he was filmed reciting part of a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem in front of local dignitaries in the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most sacred Buddhist site in Yangon, Myanmar.

Hiding in a fridge

As the political stakes rose, Johnson’s appearances on camera inevitably became much more managed, if sometimes just as ludicrous. In December 2019, the then prime minister was campaigning in West Yorkshire ahead of the general election. While visiting a dairy, he was pursued by a camera crew from ITV’s Good Morning Britain, and ended up hiding inside an industrial fridge to avoid being grilled by Piers Morgan. He still won the election, but the image lingered.

The missing seatbelt

Already disgraced, and pushed out of office for breaking Covid rules, Johnson was filmed inside a moving car while apparently not wearing a seatbelt, as he recorded a clip urging people to vote Conservative in the local elections in May this year. Complaints were made to local police, but as yet he has not been fined – unlike Rishi Sunak, who did the same thing.

Boris Johnson films himself in car allegedly without seatbelt – video