As imagined by Brian Beacom

RUMOURS of my professional death are greatly exaggerated. Yes, you may well point out that more than a dozen of my colleagues at Westminster wish to see me walk the plank, and they’re sharpening cutlasses as we speak.

And papers such as The Herald are suggesting that given this pesky parliamentary investigation is coming up, I’m clinging on by a single, fragile fingertip.

But look, the displacement photographs from India this week helped, didn’t they? Could you tell I was channelling the late Bernard Bresslaw in Carry On Up the Khyber? Carry On, Boris is the film playing in my mind!

The pics certainly helped take the heat away from Partygate, as of course did Prince Harry: Protector of the Queen. Between you and me, when Charles looks at that silly boy, I’m guessing that the word ‘protection’ is indeed the word that often flits into his mind. As in ‘should have used it’.

Yes, I know I will have to smooth over a few of the more Boris-critical voices in the party, such as Steve Baker, who was once in Team Boris during the Brexit deal. Now he’s ‘appalled’ at my attitude to the pandemic party fine. Well, I’m appalled at his being appalled – for at least I paid this fine.

I never used to pay parking ticket fines – thousands of pounds worth – I’d accumulate on my Fiat 126 when I’d parked it on double yellows while at Oxford. I simply didn’t care. And some would say it was irresponsible. But wasn’t I being responsible at the time in having acquired Belgian number plates in the first place?

Yes, it’s becoming a little fractious in the House these days, and I’m having to get used to old tartan-breeks Blackford once again saying I’m a liar. But I have to say, chaps, this is not a word we should be allowed to use in parliament – even though the debate was about my alleged mendacity.

I prefer the more circuitous language normally used. And anyway, it reveals the blue-suited Jacobite’s lack of imagination. He could have simply said ‘The Prime Minister is a fork-tongued, fabricating, untrustworthy s****-shoveler,’ and we’d all have been happier with that.

And, honestly, why can’t he realise Nicola is more likely to be a goner before I am? After she gets her independence vote and loses, he can step into her very expensive Kurt Geiger shoes and concentrate on how to get his supporters over to Skye.

Okay, yes, you want an answer to your question; ‘Given that the Hadron Collider is set to re-start, will this sub-atomic particle smasher be able to discover if I have a conscience?’ Well, let me reassure you that I’ll get back to you with an answer as soon as Tobias Ellwood’s knife is removed from my back.

But I will survive. For as that old pirate Johnny Depp has proven, a single fragile fingertip can be sewed back on and look almost as good as knew.