This isn’t a comedy quiz show, is it?

“Well, I — I — I — I, gosh, Mayor. I’m the mayor. The mayor of Lon­don. Like Dick Whit­ting­ton. How abso­lutely. Yes. Lon­don. Great city. Cradle of — of — of — of — some­thing great. Not sure what. But great, non­ethe­less. Mod­ern demo­cracy and, erm, civil­isa­tion. Or was that Rome? Italian res­taur­ant. Yum, my favour­ite. Spa­ghetti car­bon­ara. Yah. Ahem. Yes. Um. So I’ll be get­ting straight down to work in my office in — wherever my office is. City Hall. Build­ing. Thing. Place. Lots of glass. Oh look, I can see my house from here. Jolly good. So, yes, sat in my chair at my desk in City Hall. Just as soon as I’ve found it. By the river, I think. River. Big watery thing, can’t miss it really. Marvellous.

“Right, and so we start with Round One, spot the odd one out. Oh wait, not a com­edy quiz show. Real life. Lead­er­ship. Policies. Oh gulp, gosh and, um, you know. Stuff. What have you got your­self into, Boris? I don’t know, Boris. But it looks like hard work. Ser­i­ous. With meet­ings round tables. No Hen­ley garden party. No more cucum­ber sand­wiches for Boris. No. Busi­ness break­fasts, power lunches and jel­lied eels from now on.

“My — my — first task, my over­all mis­sion, my guid­ing prin­ciple, my shin­ing beacon, my light in the dark­ness, my zeal­ous, um, zeal is. What is it? Oh yes. To return this great city — oh, I said that already, didn’t I? But it bears repeat­ing. Always bears repeat­ing. Which I do a lot. Repeat. Great city — to return this great city to what it once was. A great city. Unlike Liv­er­pool, which is — is — is — full of Liv­er­pudli­ans. And Beatles. And moptops. And beat music. And foot­ball hoo­ligans. And drug addicts. Oh, not allowed to say that. Sorry, Mr Cameron. David. Dave. My mate, Dave. Erm, sorry. Sorry, Liv­er­pool. Yes. Where was I? I’m not in Liv­er­pool, that’s for cer­tain. Per­ish the thought. So. Yes.

“Not that fair old Lon­don — God bless her Majesty and all who sail in her — isn’t still a great city and hasn’t been a great city under the lead­er­ship of Mr Liv­ing­stone, I pre­sume, and his friendly newts. But it could be greater. And greater still. Like it was in the old days. Eng-er-land swings like a pen­du­lum do, Bob­bies on bicycles two by two, West­min­ster Abbey, the tower of Big Ben, the rosy red cheeks of the little chil­dren. Roger Miller, you know. Never a truer word spoken. Or sung. He was Amer­ican, but he knew a thing or three. Or two.

“So. Abso­lutely. Def­in­itely. Indubit­ably. More Bob­bies on the beat, ready to clip those young scal­li­wags round the ear for being dis­respect­ful to old ladies and politi­cians with mous­taches. Or even old ladies with mous­taches. Guns? Guns, you say? Young­sters carry guns? Or knives? Oh, I’m sure — sure — sure — yah, sure — that, ah, you know, that all these viol­ent teen­age hood­lums require is a firm, firm, firm talking-to by a clip­pie on the bus, or a com­munity police­man, and they’ll see the error of their ways. If not, I shall make them sweep the streets and do good works for the com­munity. Oh yes. Rein­tro­duce the cheery con­ductor. That was in my mani­festo, you know. Mani­festo! Great word. Mani­festo! I’ve got it here, some­where. In a pocket. I think. Oh, oh, oh. Oh dear. That’s a receipt from the bar at my private club. Gosh, what a lot of cham­pers. I might be able to claim that back on expenses. Nudge nudge, wink wink. As it were.

“Con­ges­tion? No, no, no, I — I — I — am really very healthy, and rarely get a cold. Jog­ging and cyc­ling without a hel­met, that does it for me. Head injury? I have no fear! No fear! But no con­ges­tion either. Sinus spray, you know, quick squirt up each nos­tril and, um, ah, Robert is indeed your uncle. Though he isn’t. But — but — but — Stan­ley is my father. Hello pater, your boy’s done jolly well. Sorry. Again. Los­ing the, um, plot. Plot. So con­ges­tion, yes. Oh. Con­ges­tion on the roads. I see. Yes. Yes, ter­ribly ter­ribly ser­i­ous, that. Con­ges­tion. But char­ging for the right to drive on the open road and then park in a queue is wrong. No. Driv­ing a huge great car is a sym­bol of our fine free­dom to be, erm, fine and free. And, and, and. Some­thing. Free. Yes. So I will not be extend­ing the con­ges­tion charge zone because, you know, the — the — the — envir­on­ment is lovely and dainty and green and sky already. Birds twit­ter. Noth­ing but blue skies from now on. Is that a song too?

“So this morn­ing, Lon­don­ers and Lon­don and Lon­don people, I want you to breathe in. Breathe. Take a long breath. Smell that? That’s pure, clean Lon­don air, that is. Oh gosh. Cough cough splut­ter. And you can smell it as you sit in your traffic jam in your, um, four by four by four. Oh, too many fours. But, yes, four by fours are — are — are, well, yes, they’re the size of a small tank. But they are entirely neces­sary for nego­ti­at­ing the, um, inhos­pit­able hills and dales, the mud and dirt tracks of Kens­ing­ton. And Chelsea. Lots of farm­ers there. Coun­try squires. And chil­dren called Jemima. Or Toby.

“Route­m­as­ters! Route­m­as­ter buses! Great Brit­ish sym­bol. Red. Double decker. Brrrrroooom brrrrroooom! Chugga chugga chugga chugga! That’s the noise they make, you know. Stand­ing at bus stops. When I was a mere strip­ling of a lad, school cap and knee-length shorts, climb­ing on the back of a jolly red Route­m­as­ter. Happy days. Wipe a tear, Boris dear, from your eye-eee. Oh yes. A great Brit­ish, Lon­don, city noise. Splen­did Route­m­as­ter double-decker buses. And so we shall rein­tro­duce them to London’s streets paved with gold, instead of see­ing those awful bendy buses, which are awfully bendy. Route­m­as­ters do not bend, you see. Which is a good thing. Because if you bend too much, you snap. Snap! Like a cro­codile! Or a bread-stick! That’s the laws of phys­ics for you. Yah. I have spoken to many, many, many people who said to me, ‘Boris!’ Because that’s my name. ‘Boris! Bring back Route­m­as­ters!’ And I said to these people — all of them fine, upstand­ing middle-aged gen­tle­men wear­ing cagouls, car­ry­ing pack­ets of cheese sand­wiches and — and — and with slightly whiffy, sorry but yes, slightly whiffy per­sonal hygiene prob­lems — that yes! Route­m­as­ters! Crawl­ing along the con­ges­ted roads. Brings a smile to a genu­ine God’s-honest Cockney’s face, I think you’ll find.

“And to poor dis­abled folks, old people and those gen­er­ally wobbly, infirm sorts who can­not get on Route­m­as­ters I say, um, that we will run spe­cial buses for you, because you are such spe­cial people. Spe­cial and lovely but, well, you know, you simply don’t need to go out and go to places as much as the rest of us with busy lives. Because you can’t afford to, and because you don’t have a four by four by four by four. So the spe­cial bus will run ever so fre­quently in one dir­ec­tion every two weeks, then back the other way a fort­night later. And these spe­cial buses will allow you to hobble, wobble, wheel and limp on board in style and com­fort while the rest of us get on with import­ant things like being import­ant. Gosh. These are my policies. Policies! Policy! I have one! There, that’s got the blighter.

“I have even drawn a design for a new Route­m­as­ter. Yes. Here. In crayon. In my note­book. I call it ‘Boris’s Secret Note­book’. Pops helped me with the pic­ture — hello again, daddy — and I did the col­our­ing in all by myself. I’ve estim­ated the cost of devel­op­ing the shiny new bus as, um, money. Some money. Oh, lots of money, they tell me. Still, no price is too great. Or too small. But rather, some­where in the middle. So it will cost roughly between £8 mil­lion and £90 mil­lion. We shall have to raid a few piggy banks, obvi­ously. I shall announce the name of my new piggy bank man­ager tomor­row. First thing I do. And fine, decent, hard-working, thigh-slapping Lon­don­ers will not mind sur­ren­der­ing their piggy banks to me, in exchange for their city being great again. Greater. Greatest. Great.

“Do I think — do I think — do I think? No, not often. Not if I can help it. It’s all in here, under my hair. No, you see, I shall appoint people, advisors, know­ledge­able know­ledge, ah, experts to, erm, do all the think­ing for me. I shall be the ideas man, the big cheese, le grand fro­mage. I shall lead on the big ideas like, ah, well, you know, I’m sure there’ll be some along the way. Big ideas, that is. Oh, I see! Do I think that people will desert Lon­don now that I’m mayor? Oh no. Not at all. They — they — they won’t be able to leave, as they’ll be stuck in even longer traffic jams and, um, cough­ing up their lungs. Hur­rah. Hur­rah for lungs and that, ah, breath­ing thing they do. Or the people won’t be able to leave because they will be trapped in a down­ward spiral of debt, thanks of the ever increas­ing cost of liv­ing in this fant­astic city with its fin­an­cial beat­ing heart and its pie and mash shop intest­ines. You’ll be able to go if you’re wealthy, of course, and have a house on my street. But then you won’t need to. Yah. Wow. And indeed, bow wow wow. The free mar­ket eco­nomy makes me so proud.

“On to Round Two, then. First ques­tion. Oh. I keep for­get­ting. This isn’t a com­edy quiz show, is it? Run­ning Lon­don. Tommy Steele. Sid Vicious. Vera Lynn. The Blitz. Sound of bow bells. East­Enders. Ricky! Bianca! Oi, you, get it sor­ted! Maybe it’s because I’m a Lon­doner that I love, um, where are we again? Lon­don. Oh yes. Fin­gers on buzzers, then.”