Boris Johnson has “temper tantrums” and is sort of a “great unruly golden retriever, howling for attention”, a former aide has mentioned.
Cleo Watson, who labored in Number 10 as deputy chief of workers, has additionally described her function as that of a “nanny” who needed to take the PM’s temperature through the early levels of the coronavirus pandemic and ask him whether or not he had washed his fingers.
When he insisted on working downstairs after being “pinged”, a barrier was arrange between his workplace and the adjoining one as a result of he “couldn’t resist stepping over the threshold”, Ms Watson mentioned.
She added: “So the prime ministerial ‘puppy gate’ was created,” as a part of a “fair amount of house-training”.
Ms Watson continued: “He’d kneel on the seats, his elbows propped over the top, like a great unruly golden retriever, howling for attention.”
While taking his temperature, “brandishing an oral, digital thermometer”, Ms Watson discovered that the PM, “never willing to miss a good slapstick opportunity, dutifully feigned bending over”.
During Mr Johnson’s restoration from a severe bout of COVID, when he spent a interval in intensive care, Ms Watson mentioned she inspired him to drink “vitamin-filled green juices instead of his usual Diet Coke” and discover time in his diary for “naps or very gradual exercise”.
She even pressured him to “have a sit-down once he got to the top of the famous yellow Downing Street staircase to catch his breath before a meeting”.
Referring to that interval, she mentioned: “I alternated between stern finger-wagging and soothing words in response to his regular, ‘I hate COVID now. I want everything to go back to normal. Why does everything happen to meeeeeee?’ temper tantrums.”
In an article for Tatler journal, Ms Watson refers to a forthcoming drama being made by Sky concerning the early levels of the federal government’s response to the pandemic.
She writes: “If they’re able to capture even half of the horrific out-of-body experience of standing outside the PM’s office, watching live news footage of stretcher-filled car parks in Lombardy hospitals, or the sheer bravery of Carrie heavily pregnant and reckoning with the possibility that she might be about to lose the father of her imminent firstborn child as a nation watched on, then it should be a fruitful awards season for all concerned.”
Mr Johnson is performed by Sir Kenneth Branagh, whose transformation is “uncanny” Ms Watson mentioned, referring to the “posture, the hair, the beaky nose and the basset-hound-like cheeks”.
Ms Watson began in Downing Street in 2019 after being introduced in by Mr Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings.
She left in November 2020, about two weeks after Mr Cummings’ personal departure.
In the Tatler article, Ms Watson refers to a dialog she had with Mr Johnson earlier than she left.
“He said a lot of things, the most succinct being ‘I can’t look at you any more because it reminds me of Dom. It’s like a marriage has ended, we’ve divided up our things and I’ve kept an ugly old lamp. But every time I look at that lamp, it reminds me of the person I was with. You’re that lamp’.”
Source: information.sky.com”