“It is,” my friend said, “getting like that magician in there. The one that does all the stunts.”
“David Blaine? Dynamo?”
“No. Fella with the moustache. Could get out of anything.”
“Houdini?”
“Yeah. Houdini.”
“Not really a magician. Escapologist.”
“That’s my point. That trick where the police put him in handcuffs, then put him in a water tank. With the crocodiles.”
“I don’t think...“
“Then they set the thing on fire, and hang it in the air, and he’s got ten minutes to escape, then 15 minutes pass and everyone think’s he’s dead, and they turn round and he’s at the back of the room smoking a cigar. It’s like that.”
I’m not sure Houdini ever did that trick but this conversation took place late on. I can’t remember crocodiles either but I get the idea.
There is a school of thought in Westminster that Mr Johnson might just somehow get away with all of this.
I still can’t take it in, to be honest.
Can he really slip out from under this crisis – the weight of revelation after revelation?
I – and several of my colleagues –have been writing for a long time about the game being up.
The polls are bad, his team is resigning, there’s a police investigation, his former friend is dripping poison every week, his levelling-up policy had nothing in it, and his approval rating is running at the same level as when Alan Bradley tried to kill Rita.
Yet still, my despairing mate – who works in there, who knows these things – said there is a chance Mr Johnson will survive despite everything.
Even a no-confidence vote wouldn’t see him off, would make him untouchable for a year and give him time to turn things round.
Whips are confident, the rumour is that the PM himself would quite like a vote so he can get it out of the way before things start getting really ugly.
A vote before the electoral pasting the Tories are going to get handed in May would be handy, for example.
But this is all speculation. The majority of the talk around here is still that it’s a matter of when Mr Johnson goes rather than if, and that the premature end of his leadership is approaching.
But lately, even the most committed rebels are caveating things, and there’s an unmistakable glint of fear in the eye of one or two.
We’ll see. Despite this weird undercurrent of optimism, the majority of people – me included – believe that this will all be too much for him.
Houdini could get out of anything but the Met Police didn’t have 300 photos on him.
There’s also misleading Parliament, wallpaper, Jimmy Savile attack lines and all the rest.
Meantime, I am reduced to walking round with a piece of paper in my pocket like Noel Edmonds is said to do.
Cosmic ordering, Noel calls it, where you write down what you want and the universe delivers. I hope so.
Not just for the good of the country but because if the PM makes it through to the warm weather, I stand to lose what Mr Edmonds used to call “smile money” when he was on Deal or No Deal.
This is not good – there is a cost of living crisis underway.
Still, after a life of death-defying stunts and terrifying jeopardy, Houdini died of a burst appendix.
Which goes to show that sometimes the end, when it comes, arrives in unlikely fashion.
