Enjoy an evening with Boris – the only thing you’ll believe is the price

Boris Johnson gives a thumbs up gesture after signing the Brexit trade deal with the EU in number 10 Downing Street on December 30, 2020 (Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

That would not be possible in Edinburgh in March. But then, the temperature here this weekend is in the low 30s. Very different to this time next week, when I will still be on stage at The Comedy Attic in the Grassmarket, where the temperature outside will probably be in single figures.

However, this city does feel very much like Edinburgh in August. Adelaide is the second largest arts festival in the world, after our Fringe, and the two festivals have very strong links.

Bizarrely, tickets for my 2025 Edinburgh Fringe show at The Stand Comedy Club are now already on sale, hard to believe five months and 10,000 miles away. But, I noticed today that tickets are on sale already for a show in September at the Usher Hall. It’s billed as an evening with Boris Johnson.

Reading the blurb, it says that he “led the Conservative Party to an extraordinary election victory” in 2019, although it fails to mention that he hid in a fridge to avoid awkward questions during the campaign. It then goes on to state that “delivering Brexit ... was Mr Johnson’s first major achievement in Downing Street. His government shattered the political and parliamentary deadlock that crippled the process since the 2016 referendum result”.

Again, no mention of Boris’s porky-pies on the sides of buses about NHS funding that influenced the result, and not a single word about him lying to the Queen (a woman in her 90s, let’s not forget) to suspend parliament in the run-up to the 2019 election, which allowed him to push Brexit through.

We are told that “under Mr Johnson’s leadership, the UK restored sovereign control over its borders, economy and lawmaking, finally enacting the will of the British people”. Although didn’t illegal immigration go through the roof under his watch? Ach well, don’t let the facts get in the way of selling tickets.

Apparently, we are told “at home, he unleashed a visionary agenda of domestic policy reform, with a focus on infrastructure, education and technology. He worked to ‘unite and level up’ the country”. Forget the fact that none of that ever actually happened. Just come to the show.

The publicity blurb reads like he wrote it himself. It chunters on, like Boris, to claim: “When Covid-19 struck, he led the UK through the darkest days of the pandemic.” Wait a minute, I seem to remember that England had the highest death-rate of any country in Europe due to his bumbling indecision. Apparently he handled the pandemic so wonderfully that the UK “came out of the global crisis as the fastest growing economy in the G7”. Doubtless due to the bumper sales of booze at Sainsbury’s in Westminster to fuel those lockdown-breaking parties.

If this blurb is anything to go by, this should be an evening of fall-off-your-seat comedy. As long as you don’t believe a word you hear. I might buy a ticket. Hang on, I’ve just noticed they cost forty-nine quid. Funnily enough, I can believe that bit.