Faced with a viewer labelling his son “Pinocchio” on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme, Stanley Johnson decided the best response was to insult the entirety of the British public.
With so few weapons in his rhetorical armoury to counter the suggestion that Boris Johnson has been economical with the truth, Stanley came out with:
“Pinocchio? That requires a degree of literacy which I think the Great British public doesn’t necessarily have.”
When presenter Joanna Gosling addressed his snobbery, calling it “quite a pejorative thing to say about the Great British public”, Johnson doubled down:
“They couldn’t spell ‘Pinocchio’ if they tried, I should’ve thought. Can you spell Pinocchio? Have a go, have a go.”
‘They couldn’t spell Pinocchio if they tried’@StanleyPJohnson replying to a viewer’s comment that called his son Pinocchio. pic.twitter.com/TmdhIU5W5w
— Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE) November 29, 2019