Boris Johnson says he spends his days herding cows after scandal forced him from office

Boris Johnson has revealed his strangely specific new hobby: mastering the shape of a cow.

The former British prime minister told TalkTV, the Rupert Murdoch-backed British broadcaster, that he spends his days tending cattle after handing in his resignation amid scandal last year.

In his first major television interview since leaving office, Johnson sat down with his friend and colleague Nadine Dorries, the former British Culture Secretary.

“At the moment I have a project to master the shape of the cow,” he said Friday night with Nadine in an exchange that bordered on the bizarre.

Johnson continued, “Cows are actually a lot harder to draw than you might think. How many front toes does a cow have? There are two of them and they have a little thing on their heel. And what do you call this part of the cow ?I think it’s called the bastard. What is the hollow of the knee of the cow called? The cage.

“They repay a lot of study. So now I’m making a book full of cow. Pictures of parts of cows and many whole cows and my goal is to master the cow. I’ll get there then stop the horse.”

This is not the first time Johnson has revealed an unusual hobby. He told TalkRadio in 2019 that he makes model buses. “I get old, I don’t know, wooden boxes, and I paint them. It’s a crate used to hold two wine bottles, right, and it’s going to share something. And I turn it into a bus,” he said.

TalkTV has been dribbling headlines from the interview for days, but the context of the session is also provoking discussion. Dorries and Johnson are close allies, raising questions about whether the interview will be rigorous. Dorries is also the last UK lawmaker to sign off on her own TV show, prompting media regulator Ofcom to remind broadcasters of their duty of impartiality.

Asked about the Downing Street Partygate scandal, Johnson said people were “crazy” to think he “knowingly goes to parties that break lockdown rules at Number 10 and then knowingly goes to parties that can’t be covered up”. .

He added that it was “vanishingly unlikely” that Vladimir Putin would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. “In practice, it won’t matter much on the battlefield. He will just abandon all hope of standing by any opinion anywhere in the world. It will be a disaster for him,” he said.