If you follow me on Twitter you’ll know my opinion on Brexit – and by extension, what I think of the current UK government with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. If you don’t, my feelings can be summarised as this: Both things are a crock of shit.
I’m not going to go over any of the arguments in this post, just suffice it to say that’s what my opinion is. Brexit is a crock of shit – and the government under Boris Johnson is a crock of shit.
However, I was having a bit of fun with it all for a while last year, ‘photoshopping’ (but using either The Gimp or Xara Photo and Graphic Designer, or a combination of both, rather than Photoshop). My abilities aren’t as good as some, but it can be good fun to do – and I’ve decided I might as well gather the results together and dump them here.
This, then, is the cream of the crap – which you can either interpret as a reflection of my photo editing skills, or as a reflection of the people within the photos. I’m easy. 🙂
This is where it started. Lord Paul Strasburger put a photo of Johnson on Twitter, and asked if anyone could give him a longer nose (as per Pinocchio) so it could be posted when he lies. I thought I’d give it a try, and duly sent him the following image.
![Pinocchio Johnson](/images/2020/humour/PinocchioJohnson.jpeg)
That was actually the second attempt. Edited in The Gimp, I selected a portion of the end of his nose, and pasted it back onto the image repeatedly, moving it left and down a bit each time. The first attempt was done the same way, but I used a larger selection, and moved it further in each direction at each step. The result looked ribbed – and in fact looked scarily like I’d taken a picture of a penis and attached it to his face.
Unfortunately, I can’t find that version – I probably deleted it on the basis that it was a bit of a cock up.
Shortly after that, I saw a news report mentioning Sajid Javid (Chancellor at the time) and I immediately thought of The Hood from Thunderbirds.
![Hood Javid](/images/2020/humour/HoodJavid.jpeg)
And I think I’d already been referring to Dominic Cummings as the Mekon, so when I saw a suitable picture of him in a caption (by someone else) I did the necessary photo edit to produce this.
![Mekon Cummings](/images/2020/humour/MekonCummings.jpeg)
I then did another using different starting images.
![Mekon Cummings](/images/2020/humour/MekonCummings2.jpeg)
Then I found a picture of the Cabinet in session, and added that image to it.
![The Mekon Cummings summons the cabinet to his presence](/images/2020/humour/MekonCabinet.jpeg)
There was a lot of publicity when Johnson got a pet dog, and when I saw the pictures of it arriving at 10 Downing Street, I thought it looked a bit sad, so I immediately thought:
![Why me?](/images/2020/humour/SadDog.jpeg)
I saw an image of Conservative MP Gavin Williamson, and the first thing that came to mind was “Aha!”
![I'm Gavin Williamson - aha!](/images/2020/humour/GavinPartridge.jpeg)
References to the odious Crispin Odey was popping up in my feed a fair bit – this bastard made huge profits (over two hundred million quid, if memory serves) on the result of the EU referendum and the hit the pound took. Whenever I see him, I think of Shrek.
![Shrek Odey](/images/2020/humour/ShrekOdey.jpeg)
There had been some comments about how much control Johnson would, in effect, be giving to Trump if and when we sign a deal with the US. So the obvious thing to do was put Trump at the despatch Box in the House of Commons.
![Donald Trump at the despatch box in the House of Commons](/images/2020/humour/TrumpParly.jpeg)
But if I’ve replaced Johnson with Trump, it’s only right to replace Trump with Johnson – so I took that famous picture of Trump apparently shouting at a boy.
![Boris Johnson shouting at a boy on the Whitehouse lawn](/images/2020/humour/JohnsonWH.jpeg)
I should have added a caption to that, in retrospect. My immediate thought now is “HEY, WHERE’S THE NEAREST FRIDGE!” – but Johnson hiding in a fridge hadn’t yet happened when I produced the image.
When Johnson was losing support in the Commons, I saw an image posted with the caption “This time next week” showing him alone on his side of the house, with the opposition side packed. I thought it lacked one thing, so I added Jacob Rees-Mogg.
![Boris Johnson at the despatch box, with Rees-Mogg taking a break](/images/2020/humour/ThisTimeNextWeek.jpeg)
The ironically named James Cleverley once put up a picture of him pointing at a Brexit clock. Too obvious, really.
![The ironically named James Cleverley pointing to the clock that counts down until the UK's ruin](/images/2020/humour/CountdownUK.jpeg)
And I also made a version for use on RISCOSitory in the run up to the 2019 London Show.
![The ironically named James Cleverley helpfully pointing to the clock that counts down until the 2019 RISC OS London Show](/images/2020/humour/CountdownLondon.jpeg)
Remember that time Johnson chose not to appear at a press conference in Luxembourg with Xavier Bettel (Luxembourg’s own PM), and the press conference went ahead with an empty podium? What a chicken.
![A suitable stand-in was found for Johnson at a press conference in Luxembourg](/images/2020/humour/ChickenJohnson.jpeg)
Around the time of the unlawful proroguing of Parliament, I wondered how Cummings, Johnson, and Rees-Mogg would adapt to life in prison.
![Dominic Cummings serving at Her Majesty's pleasure](/images/2020/humour/CummingsJailbird.jpeg)
![Boris Johnson serving at Her Majesty's pleasure](/images/2020/humour/JohnsonJailbird.jpeg)
![Jacob Rees-Mogg serving at Her Majesty's pleasure](/images/2020/humour/ReesMoggJailbird.jpeg)
A headline in the Daily Telegraph said “Johnson to enshrine 2020 Brexit in law”, with a picture of him with a group, pointing and laughing. I corrected it.
![Hey, British Public! The joke's on you! Haha!](/images/2020/humour/JokesOnYou.jpeg)
I also helped Johnson achieve his ultimate goal:
![Boris Johnson has wanted to be Prime Minister for a long time. Now he's achieved that goal, the next item on his bucket list is to become Queen.](/images/2020/humour/QueenJohnson.jpeg)
Those were all from the last few months of 2019, and here’s something a little more recent – like the very first image above, prompted by Lord Paul Strasburger; he asked for captions for the original picture, and I obliged with my take on it.
![A man in the park reprimands Johnson after thinking he was homeless and giving him some money.](/images/2020/humour/JohnsonTheBeggar.jpeg)
Finally, glancing through my files, I also found a work in progress that I hadn’t touched in months. I’ve been saying for a long time that Dominic Raab reminds me of Simon Cadell from Hi-de-Hi, so I grabbed a picture of the Hi-de-Hi cast and did the necessary, then added Johnson, Rees-Mogg, and Kate Hoey (actually a labour MP at the time, but a vocal brexiter). I’ve now very quickly added a few more faces – it’s now mostly the cabinet, with a couple of exceptions, such as Hoey.
![MP de MP](/images/2020/humour/MPdeMP.jpeg)
In future, if and when I knock together any other silly images of this type, I’ll post them on this blog.