Boris, Mark Mardell, and Julian and his friend Sandy

Bozza

If my memory isn't failing me, I'm sure it was last Sunday that MB described that week's The World This Weekend as a 'Get Boris!' edition.

Well, if so, this week's The World This Weekend was its even grittier sequel, 'Get Boris With a Vengeance!'

Still heavily focusing on the domestic row and Boris's refusal to answers journalist's questions about it, Mark Mardell's narration was nothing if not loaded against Mr Johnson.

And that first bit was followed by a 'reality check' piece from the BBC's James Lansdale which targeted the claims of Boris and his supporters that he scored a success as Foreign Secretary by achieving a united diplomatic front against Russia after the Salisbury poisonings, and found those claims wanting.

And then came an interview with a former ambassador Peter Westmacott, who also - very politely and discreetly - trashed Mr Johnson.  (Naturally, I checked his Twitter feed and found - to my no great surprise - that he's the kind of former ambassador who regularly retweets Lord Adonis and Anna Soubry, liked Change UK-The Independent Tiggers, and was rooting for Rory.)

Hit after hit after hit against Boris.

Jeremy Hunt got off scot free.

It's almost as if the BBC was campaigning against Boris.

Please give it a listen for yourselves and see if you agree. 

*******

If you do you might also catch the closing item on Polari - the slang-filled language invented and used by gay men from the 1940s to the 1960s that is now making a bit of a comeback.

The expert being interviewed, Paul Baker, was very bona.

I learned that its heavily-simplified use by Julian and his friend Sandy on the BBC's Round the Horne probably resulted in its going out of fashion. Its original appeal was that gay men could use the language and non-gay people wouldn't recognise it or understand it or realise that those using it were gay. After the BBC made it known to the general public non-gay people became much more likely to realise that the men using it - if, say, they overheard it on a bus - were gay.

I liked Round the Horne. 

HORNE: I'm interested in booking a holiday.
JULIAN: Would you like us to do something exciting for you in a cheap package?
HORNE: Yes. What would you recommend?
SANDY: Well, how about Juan in the S of F? That's Les Pins. Bona, ennit Jules?
JULIAN: Divine. Sitting, sipping a tiny drinkette, vada·ing the great butch omis and dolly little palones trolling by, or disporting yourself on the sable plage getting your lallies all bronzed - your riah getting bleached by the soleil.