Guto Harri on his first meeting with Boris since being named Director of Communications:
“I walked in, I gave him a salute and said ‘Prime Minister, Guto Harri reporting for duty’ and he stood up from behind his desk and started to salute but then said ‘What am I doing, I should take the knee for you.”….
“I then asked ‘Are you going to survive Boris?’ And he said in his deep voice, slowly and with purpose, whilst singing a little as he finished his sentence ‘I Will Survive’. ” he answered, ‘I’ve got all my love to give’, so we had a little blast of Gloria Gaynor!”
In Henry Mance’s piece today for the FT, lunching with Nigel Farage:
“Splendido!” Farage says, when the drinks arrive; I suppose it’s a step to European reconciliation. We clink glasses, and he lights the first of two back-to-back Benson & Hedges. A few minutes later, we’re back downstairs. “Are you drinking? Good.” He orders a glass of Sauvignon blanc for each of us — not a bottle, “because it’s Lent” — followed by a bottle of claret, to have with our meal. They say Farage drinks less than he used to. They say a lot of things.”