Why not having a live audience is a blessing in disguise for our funnyman prime minister

Johnson may not enjoy public speaking so much when there’s no one there to perform to, writes Sean O’Grady, but silence is a better option than the heckling he may have otherwise endured

Boris Johnson speaking at the Tory conference (Andrew Parsons / CCHQ)

Like the late Frankie “Titter ye not” Howerd, Al “Pub Landlord” Murray and Roy “Chubby” Brown, Boris “Prime Minister” Johnson is a turn that really only thrives with a live audience. The prime minister of mirth, as he admitted during his virtual speech to the Conservative Party conference, feels at his best when he has an audience to play off. In such a setting, the prime minister can get his timing right, judge his mock fluffs and the length of a pause, and deliver such carefully crafted laugh lines as “Captain Hindsight and his regiment of pot-shot, snipeshot fusiliers”.  

It was once remarked that Michael Heseltine, a party favourite of a previous age, was the only man who knew how to find the G-spot of the Conservative Party conference; Johnson is one very few to be able to tickle its funny bone. Yet success in either endeavour requires the recipient of such attentions to be present. Alas, a word the prime minister has turned into a bit of a catchphrase, he must play to an empty house.

Despite taking head on the question of his missing “mojo”, a question that recalls the Austin Powers movie The Spy Who Shagged Me, BoJo looked shagged out, a lonely figure on stage, without even Carrie nearby to boost his ever-hungry ego and nod loving approval. He seemed over-eager to contest the parliamentary gossip that he is past his best, that the act is getting tired, that there is a new performer on the block called Keir, with a more deadpan style, but winning the rave reviews and beating him in the ratings.  

As he is discovering in the present denuded House of Commons, the prime minister is a bewildered, diminished figure without a claque of cheerleaders and a noisily appreciative crowd around him. The coronavirus crisis has thus been trebly unkind to him. First it put him in intensive care; then it revealed the incompetence of his administration; and third it robbed him of his natural performative environment.  

Fortunately for Johnson though, the Tory activists and MPs have far less opportunity for backbiting and plotting than they usually do during their jamborees. Zoom calls are not really the same as The Spectator reception or a hotel bar at three in the morning for dreaming about how great a Sunak premiership would be. They all know that Britain hasn’t led the world in its response to Covid, and some Conservatives at least must fear the chaos of a no deal Brexit in the midst of a pandemic. In 2020, though, there fewer forums for them to debate what went wrong and who is to blame – and little chance organise a winter coup.  

After a decade in power it has become impossible for them to claim that the Labour Party or the mainstream media are responsible for one of the worst Covid death tolls in the world. The focus is on the Conservatives. The party is well aware that the public is losing patience with the prime minister’s performance, and a few gags about the “Birdie Song” isn’t going to put that right.  

Next year, if he survives as leader that long and returns to normal, Johnson may find that he really is heckled by a hostile party that once loved him, but which now feels betrayed. Even for a showbiz legend like Johnson it would be like playing the notorious Glasgow Empire in the old days. That’s not so funny.