Boris ignores Rishi and Partygate in first big column to write about cheese
Boris Johnson’s highly-anticipated Daily Mail column has finally dropped, hours after the website confirmed he was their new star writer.
The former PM, who has had a turbulent week full of twists, turns and scandal, is reportedly being paid £1 million for the new high-profile column.
Despite hopes among political journalists he might spill the beans on his fall out with Rishi Sunak, or what he plans to do next in politics, he’s instead chosen to focus on a different topic entirely: his problem losing weight.
The column, entitled “The wonder drug I hoped would stop my 11.30 pm fridge raids for cheddar and chorizo didn’t work for me. But I still believe it could change the lives of millions”, details his battle with cheese addiction.
He writes about the hope offered to middle-aged men – who can’t resist a late-night trip to the fridge to snack on fromage and chorizo – by a new wonder drug being used by some of his political colleagues to drop pounds without much effort.
He says the drug could help him “Say goodbye to that unconquerable mid-morning lust for a bacon sandwich. No longer will you stand over the children waiting for them to push aside their bowls of pasta — and then ruthlessly scoff whatever they have left.”
Mr Johnson says he tried the drug, injected into his stomach, for weeks, steadily losing “four or five pounds a week”.
However it soon “started to go wrong”.
“I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe it was something to do with constantly flying around the world, and changing time zones, but I started to dread the injections, because they were making me feel ill.
“One minute I would be fine, and the next minute I would be talking to Ralph on the big white phone; and I am afraid that I decided that I couldn’t go on.
“For now I am back to exercise and willpower, but I look at my colleagues — leaner but not hungrier — and I hope that if science can do it for them, maybe one day it can help me, and everyone else.”
The drug, semaglutide, was approved for use by NHS England in March after increasing popularity in the USA.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) concluded the drug is safe, effective and affordable, and could lead to users to reduce their weight by over 10% if combined with a good diet and exercise.
Mr Johnson jokes in his Mail column that the rapidly increasing jawlines among his Cabinet colleagues began to worry him when he realised it could only mean one of two things.
“If an otherwise healthy middle-aged man displays sudden weight loss, I reasoned, there are only two possible explanations. Either he has fallen hopelessly in love, or else he is about to mount a Tory leadership bid.”
Mr Johnson defends the new drug against those who say overweight people shouldn’t search for medical solutions over exercising more.
He argues: “I see nothing morally wrong in using these drugs to help you lose weight, any more than it is wrong to use an electrically assisted bicycle to get up the hill”.
“Even for us fatties, it turns out, there is such a thing as satiety — and science has found it.”
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