Boris Johnson is remodeled from raveled scruff to man from Matalan in startling new vacation snaps
Over the years, I’ve looked at topless pictures of Boris Johnson more than I would like. And this new set of Instagram pics is different in one important respect. He looks …. kind of alright
Boris looks…kind of alright in the latest set of photos(Image: INSTAGRAM)
Trim, groomed and well-dressed are not usually words you’d associate with Boris Johnson holiday snaps.
Disheveled, scruffy and ill-fitting were more commonly found in newspaper tales about Johnson’s regular Grecian getaways. So when images of the Johnsons holidaying on an island landed on wife Carrie’s Instagram yesterday (FRI), they raised a few eyebrows.
Carrie, is typically goddess-esque in the photoset. No change there. Although there is one snap where she’s leaning so far back on a stool I feared for the integrity of her spine. If that’s a natural sitting position for her, she may wish to consider becoming acquainted with a chiropractor.
But Boris is the real surprise, because he looks …. alright. I’d hesitate to use the low-effort “Boris looks unrecognisable” trope, but it’s not far off. He’s had a haircut and a shave, although that line of fluff along his lower jaw continues to stubbornly avoid his razor. He’s not wearing his usual holiday uniform of noisy board shorts paired with, for some reason, an un-ironed dress shirt. (Never ironed, always tucked in to the shorts.) Instead he’s paired the deafening shorts with tasteful tee shirts. Or, in several of the snaps, with nothing at all. And, I wouldn’t want to lead readers to think I’ve developed a thirst for Britain’s second worst Prime Minister, but I say again, he looks … alright.
Over the years, I’ve looked at pictures of Boris Johnson with his top off more than I would like. And be they long-lenses, selfies and those unfortunate snaps of him trying out boogie boarding, presumably for the first time, none of them showed him in a particularly flattering light. Until now. He’s all shoulder and arms, barely an unsightly curve or flap in sight. I have no idea if it’s diet, exercise, jabs or flattering camera angles – though I suspect it’s the latter, or he’d bored everyone with it in a deceptively wordy column – but something’s working for him. Of course, none of this matters. Our coverage of Boris Johnson’s lazy days on sun-drenched beaches during the Number 10 years usually focused on which billionaire owned said stretch of sandy coastline, or which national crisis he was neglecting in order to sup Mythos outside a faux rustic villa.
There’s always been a theory that Johnson’s cuddly scruffbag image was carefully curated. And I’ve personally seen him deliberately messing up his hair moments before walking out to give a speech, so as to bolster his practiced bumbling. But something – maybe it was the dress shirts on the beach – always returned me to the conclusion that he is naturally lacking in care for his appearance. This has, apparently changed. He’s putting in the effort – at least for the purposes of Carriegram.
But Boris should bear in mind that if he ever attempted to parlay this new Man from Matalan image as a soft soap route back into British public life, he would barely make it past customs before being chased back onto the plane by families from around Britain still furious that he presided over Partygate while they held weddings and funerals on zoom.
