Why does Boris Johnson command stupid money for public speaking? In February he reported a £2.5m advance; that seems awfully steep for 20 minutes of “Caecilius est in Peppa Pig World”. It’s a fair, indeed pressing, question posed by the Financial Times recently. I would happily pay a significant sum – all the money I spend on takeaways in a year, say, with the attendant sacrifice that involves for a reluctant cook – never to see or hear him again.
The journalist Janan Ganesh concluded that it’s partly Johnson’s voice: “Beautiful … deep and textured, raspy without crossing into sibilance”. I forced myself to listen to a little of it, and, OK, it’s deeper than I remembered, but he sounds slightly congested to me, like he needs to lay off the Daylesford cheese. I understand the point, however. It’s a voice redolent both of a more lighthearted, Wodehousian time and, if you’re truly deluded, the Churchillian doggedness to which he aspires.
