Boris has tried the political equivalent of getting his dad over when the other boys in the playground are being mean to him. Stanley Johnson has let rip with Nick Ferrari on LBC this morning:

“I thought Eddie Mair’s interview was about the most disgusting piece of journalism I’ve listened to for a very long time. The BBC sank about as low as it could. If grilling people about their private lives, accusing them of guilt by association and openly abusing them is a legitimate interview, then frankly, I don’t know where we are coming. On the one point, which he started off with, the quote. Well I know about that quote. This was Boris, twenty-five years ago, thirty years ago, ringing up his godfather who was a historian and he got it wrong. He got what the godfather had said wrong and later on, those things happened as a result of that. But good heavens, if that’s the worst you can do, is dig up something thirty years ago. Most journalists I know make up quotes all the time and I don’t think they don’t go down the drain for it.”

Mair’s line of questioning was pretty fair, even if it was all old news. Boris could have dealt with it with minimum fuss by saying all this information was in the public domain when the people of London returned him as Mayor. His line to the Sun this morning was much more like it: “Fair play to Eddie Mair, he landed a good one. If the BBC can’t bash Tory politicians then what is the point of the BBC?” A bad day out which his dad is just making worse…