Boris Goes Ape

“It was his own fault – if he hadn’t gone near that child it would never have happened,” Roger Boner, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan police told the press following the shooting of former London Mayor and Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson earlier today. “People saw this great hulking beast holding a small child by the arm and they just panicked – it was like that business in Cleveland all over again, when they shot that gorilla after that kid climbed into its enclosure.” The full circumstances of the Boris Johnson incident still aren’t entirely clear, all that is known is that the right wing buffoon was campaigning in South London for the ‘Leave’ movement in the run up to the EU referendum. He was apparently addressing an open air public meeting when the child somehow managed to climb onto the podium. “All Boris was trying to do was to remove the child from the podium to a place of safety,” Algernon Plank, an anti-EU campaigner who witnessed the whole incident told a local newspaper. “But a section of the crowd – probably remain supporters – assumed that he was putting the child at risk and started screaming at Boris, which just panicked him and put him on the defensive.” Other witnesses, however, are adamant that the former Mayor was behaving aggressively. “He was holding the child over his head with both hands and snarling at the audience,” Remain supporter Fred Frick claimed. “I don’t see how that can be construed as being ‘protective’ – quite frankly, I was convinced that he was about to scale the nearest tall building, dragging the kid with him!”

The family of the child say that they have no idea how he ended up on the podium with Johnson. “We weren’t even attending the meeting, we were just walking past,” said his mother, twenty nine year old Christine Jam. “I only took my eyes off of him for a minute and the next thing I knew, everything was kicking off!” Jam believes that her four year old’s fascination with great apes was undoubtedly what led him into mounting the podium. “He obviously mistook Boris Johnson for some kind of hominid – an Orang Utan, possibly – and saw an opportunity to actually get closer to one than he’d ever been able to at the zoo,” she explained. “Whilst I understand that his sudden presence must have startled Johnson, there really was no need for the brute to manhandle my boy like that.” Leave supporters have been calling for the family to be investigated by police and social services, alleging that the child was deliberately deployed to disrupt the meeting. “They are clearly Remain supporters,” declared Algernon Plank. “Their use of their young child in this way shows that they are obviously unfit parents – and even if they didn’t send him in deliberately, then they are negligent for letting a four year old wander off like that! Either way, they should be prosecuted for child abuse!” An early Sky News report claiming that the Jam family were benefits claimants living in a caravan on a patch of waste ground in Streatham has been dismissed by Remain supporters as Brexit propaganda. “The Jams are actually middle class professionals – she’s an accountant and he’s a solicitor,” says Fred Frick. “That report was an outrageous slur on them -this was clearly an accident. It is clearly Johnson who is to blame, terrifying the child with his flailing arms and incoherent grunting.”

The incident isn’t the first time that Johnson has found himself mistaken for a great ape during the Brexit campaign – only two weeks ago at a public meeting in Leicester, he found himself being taunted by a group of youths who threw bananas at him. “He became visibly distressed, charging toward the youths in an attempt to intimidate them,” recalls Frick, who was at the Leicester event. “When that didn’t work, he climbed up the nearest tree and refused to come down until the police had dispersed the youths.” Only days before the current incident, Johnson became flustered during a live debate with Labour’s Hillary Benn, beating his chest and bellowing at the shadow Foreign Secretary as he found himself losing the economic argument for leaving the EU. “In all of these cases Boris was clearly provoked,” claims Bert Sock, a conservationist who has long been campaigning for the protection of Britain’s rapidly vanishing eccentric politicians. “The fact is that he clearly wasn’t losing that debate – Hillary Benn kept poking him with a stick, deliberately trying to enrage Boris.”

In the chaos which followed Boris’ recent interaction with young Jimmy Jam, armed police were called to the scene and a single shot fired, felling the former Mayor. “It was completely unnecessary,” opined Bert Sock. “There are no recorded cases of Boris Johnson ever harming a child – left to his own devices he is basically a passive beast, mumbling unintelligbly on obscure subjects and harmlessly waving his arms.” The police spokesperson took a different view, pointing out that Johnson does has form for violence. “Whilst it is true that he has never harmed a child, his kneeing in the groin of a German player in a charity football match was seen on TV,” observes Roger Boner. “Then there was that business of him trying to arrange to have that reporter beaten up on behalf of one of his friends. In view of such incidents, we just couldn’t take the chance.” He also rejected suggestions that the police could have used means other than firearms to subdue the rampaging ex-Mayor. “Are you serious?” he asked. “Faced with a hulking anthropoid assaulting a child what do you expect us to use, pea shooters? I mean, if he’d been a real gorilla then we might have considered using a tranquiliser gun. After all, they are an endangered species, whereas right-wing bastards are two-a-penny these days.” Luckily, Johnson wasn’t seriously injured thank to the copious rolls of fat on his body, which absorbed most of the bullet’s impact. However, he is expected to be off the Brexit campaign trail for at least a week. In the meantime, his place will be taken by a gorilla in a blonde wig. “With luck, nobody will notice,” says Algernon Plank. “After all, Nigel Farage was replaced by a braying donkey two weeks ago and it hasn’t made any difference so far.”