Coronavirus: At least poor Boris Johnson shuts up when the experts are speaking – Susan Morrison.

Amid the coronavirus crisis, Boris Johnson looks like a teddy bear with the stuffing kicked out of him, while Nicola Sturgeon plays a blinder by repeating whatever Scotland’s Chief Medical officer says, writes Susan Morrison.

Nicola Sturgeon with Chief Medical Officer Dr Catherine Calderwood at a briefing on the coronavirus outbreak (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Way back in 1975, the BBC launched a series called ­Survivors. A flu-like virus had swept the planet and killed most of the population. The opening sequence would give you the screaming abdabs now, with shots of planes taking off and passports being stamped in Madrid, Rome and London, all modern-day hotspots for our new friend, the coronavirus.

The virus in Survivors was way more deadly than Covid-19, to use the Sunday name.

It’s a long time since I’ve watched it, but I don’t remember endless press conferences with the prime minister flanked by serious looking scientists and rolling 24-hour news giving us shots of empty streets in Paris and Milan.

Having said that, they’d have picked a better actor to play the PM. Olivia Colman would do very well in the role. She’s in everything else at the moment.

Poor Boris. He never signed up for this, did he? He’s increasingly looking like a teddy bear with the stuffing kicked out of him. His shambling piffle-whiffle shtick doesn’t work when real grown-ups are standing next to him. At least he has the good grace to zip it when the medics are speaking.

Times like these always produce the most unlikely heroes. During the Falklands, a dry, dull civil servant called Ian McDonald became the voice the nation turned to for information. He delivered the terrible news that we had lost a ship of the line, HMS Sheffield, in the same measured tones he used to detail the movement of the fleet. He was a ­Glaswegian, interestingly. Didn’t sound it, I’ll grant you that. Just as well. At times of international conflict, the last thing you need is a Glasgow accent bellowing ‘Gonna no dae that or Ah’ll panel yer windaes in.’ Yes. I know it’s a stereotype, but believe me, I’ve seen this one in action.

In England they have Professor Christopher Whitty, a man with looks a tad weary, as well he might, with that surname at an English public school.

It’s a flying cert that young lads very much like half the current cabinet would have spent a happy half hour during their school days baying ‘Tell us a joke, Whitty’, then hooting with laughter when he didn’t. Well, Chris, they aren’t laughing now...

In Scotland we’ve got Catherine Calderwood, who strikes me as very much like the jolly female consultants I have met in the last couple of years.

Yes, she says, things are going to get grim. But she says it in a way that makes you think, yeah, but things, eventually, are going to get better.

I’ve not always seen eye-to-eye with our First Minister, but she’s playing a blinder by basically just standing there and saying “What she said”, only in longer sentences.

This is what we need from our ­politicians at the moment, a bit of calm, measured tones and full, ­flowing sentences.

God help you, America.