While the Supreme Court decides whether Boris Johnson has lied, Boris Johnson is filmed lying

At the very moment the prime minister’s barrister is arguing he did not lie to the Queen, the prime minister lies to a sick child’s dad in an east London hospital

And so we turn to today’s auto-satirical Boris Johnson wire service. I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again: I don’t write this stuff, I just type it out.

It’s Wednesday morning. It’s day two of the biggest court case anybody can remember. You, the prime minister, stand accused of lying to the Queen in order to shut down parliament, and you’re in an especially deep hole because, thus far, you’ve refused to provide any kind of witness statement to deny it.

You’ve got your top lawyer on it. He’s standing up in the Supreme Court, patiently explaining not just to 11 Supreme Court judges but to the entire world (seriously, they’re livestreaming this stuff in Beirut airport), that you definitely haven’t lied to the Queen. And even if you had, that’s her problem not yours.

And there you are, in a hospital in east London, being filmed by the TV news cameras you have invited there, as you are berated by the dad of a sick child, for, in his words, “destroying the NHS.”

“You don’t care, you’re only here for a press opportunity,” the dad tells him.

And you, the prime minister, the one who’s halfway through a huge court case about whether or not you lied to the Queen, open your gob and the following words come out.

“There are no press here.”

The words are almost inaudible at first, scarcely picked up by the TV camera filming you, beneath the noise of the cameras from the press photographers. The angry dad wafts an open palm at the press, whom you have just said are not there, and says “What are they then?”

This is, again, filmed and photographed – by the press you have invited there, and whose existence you are denying while standing three yards away from them.

Alas, by the time legal cases reach the Supreme Court, no fresh evidence is admissible. It is too late, for example, for the prime minister to submit a witness statement about whether or not he lied to the Queen. And it is also too late for the Supreme Court to consider that, while they sit there weighing up whether or not the prime minister has lied to the Queen, the prime minister is standing in front of the press, saying it isn’t there.

Still, it is, as ever, happy days for the lawyers. It is surely a matter of time before the Supreme Court is asked to consider whether the prime minister lied to an angry dad in Whipps Cross hospital, Leytonstone. What might the in house lawyer come up with for that one?

One supposes it could be said that, in a way, “the press” were not there. The visit was kept a secret from the local MP, the local paper, and indeed anyone who might press upon the prime minister anything more challenging than standing there holding a camera while your very existence is denied.

Had the local paper, the Waltham Forest Echo, been made aware of the visit, they had a question they would have liked to ask the prime minister. And it’s this: why is it that Whipps Cross hospital, which is 116 years old and described recently as “not fit for purpose”, is not one of the 20 hospitals that the prime minister has found some new money for.

Just as well “the press” weren’t there then.

Except they were. And so, alas, were the general public, who from Wakefield to Waltham Forest, from Leeds to Luxembourg, loathe him in equal measure absolutely everywhere he goes.