GOOD MORNING, MR JOHNSON

You can’t remember whether you’ve met Mr Johnson. Why you can’t remember, you’ve no idea of either, yet. The fact that you will doesn’t exactly reassure, since you’ve still no notion of who this Johnson is.




If it’s the first meeting, you should sound upbeat and on-message, yet not so gung-ho that you shake his hand into perpetual motion, or squish it to pulp like a boorish populist.

Or is this the Johnson that stole the money, and then came up with that cockamamie story about children’s charity? In which case you should fix him with your worst go-and-sit-on-the-naughty-step stare, shake your head ever so slightly, so that he registers your opprobrium, and reinforce it with a tut or a huff, if that is your style.

But take care; this might well turn out to be the Johnson that they all talk about. This could be the Johnson who turns heads and fills hearts with magic, the Johnson you are secretly in love with, despite never having met.

This magic Johnson could run for office someday, they say. You’ve watched his well-formed buns near the water fountain, and have lingered to chat over coffee, and sighed to yourself that you are unworthy to be the missus or mister that this magic man might want in his life.

 

Or else it could be just plain old Johnson, the Johnson they’ve never talked about again, the Johnson with the big Saudi contacts, the Johnson from the Foreign Office who headed up the Milton Keynes conference where you negotiated the contract that would only later be reported to have included a covert supply of flesh-melting white phosphorous, the special kind that the Israelis use that fades into the background on contact with most major Western media outlets, you know, the Johnson you went to school with, the one with the penchant for patent red high heels, three-piece suits and hotel parties.

 

Is it him? Is that the Johnson you’re meeting? You sure hope so, because you know what? If you remember rightly, he was a really nice guy. You liked him.

 

- Good morning, Mr Johnson.