Boris the Spider

Originally published: March 15 2010

This puzzled my overseas readership when it first appeared. However, since the London Olympics I think everyone now knows about Boris Johnson, unbelievably (but very entertainingly) twice elected as Mayor of London.

Boris is a bit of a contradiction - he's a liberal leaning Conservative, a highly intelligent man who acts like a buffoon, and a man with an unerring ability to get into scrapes like this…

Getting stuck on a zipwire while publicising the London Olympics
Boris causing chaos in a river
Boris on Have I Got News for You
Boris making one of his speeches, being simultaneously inept, erudite, embarrassing and baffling to wonderful effect

Why did I make Boris a spider? This is why.

Pfeffel is one of his middle names. What is it about weird middle names that turns people into politicians? It seems to work for American presidents as well.

Finally, here's a book recommendation. Johnson's Life of London. He may not be able to walk in a straight line but he writes like a dream. How can you dislike a book that starts a chapter on the life of Hadrian with the word "Clonk"?

Spider art

He’s just playing with your mind, Jones.

Spiders suck

And now the tables start to turn. Our nameless Money Spider (let’s call him Goodwin) realises that Jones has an irrational fear and starts playing it up for all he’s worth…

Big web

Revisiting another theme planted earlier in the year, Jones’ fear of spiders. If you look back at the photos of The Cat Who Stares at Stuff, you’ll see he’s sitting next to an outbuilding, which contains garden sheds for the downstairs flats and a communal bin area. There’s a walkway between that and the main building, and that where the spiders like to spin their webs overnight. You’d think they’d learn not to do it by now, as the first thing that happens every morning is someone taking their trash out and walking straight through the middle of it.

Giant Raft Spiders

This (click here) was the story that inspired this set of arachnophobic strips. I heard about it on a nature programme on BBC Radio 4 while driving home from a theatre rehearsal one night, and it set me thinking, how happy am I to have these monsters next door? Especially when they're giant spiders that have been hand reared by a mad scientist. Money spiders are great fun but these are hulking four-inch brutes that can walk on water. There is a stream at the bottom of my garden - I don't want these things walking over, entering my house and chewing my face off! (I may be exaggerating slightly about the face-chewing).

Tuffet

I've taken the meaning of 'tuffet' to be a grassy hillock, or 'knoll' if you will. A tuffet can also be taken to be one of those hard rectangular cushions you get to kneel on in church.

99 bonk!

What goes 99-bonk? A centipede with a wooden leg. Ai thang yow.

Show

This is what comes of living with an American, you pick up their speech patterns without realising it. No-one would say "Watching your rodent show, Jones?" in England. We'd say "Watching your rodent programme". Shows are light entertainment, but a documentary is definitely a programme.

I'm OK with spiders, but my wife isn't. I think she's not used to the size of the house spiders we get in England. In New Mexico the spiders tend to be fairly small and crunchy - in England they can be two inches across and substantial enough for their footfalls to be audible on parquet flooring. They're harmless (unless you're a fly) but they can give you a funny turn if you unexpectedly find one in the bath.

If you want to make me run screaming from the room in abject trouser dampening terror, just show me a picture of a Praying Mantis. I don't know what it is about them that terrifies me - may be it's the fact that that head has no right to stay balanced on shoulders that small. That and the way they STARE...