On the Bank Holiday Monday, as I gave a house tour, I knew what it felt like to stand in front of a congregation (of paying tea and tour “punters” in my case) and give a duff sermon. I’m sure priests know that sense of inner failure when they just aren’t “on form”, for whatever reason, and however much passion and zeal they try to bring to illuminating the Gospel, they sense their words – or an attempted joke – falling flat. I blanked for a horrible eight seconds on the upper landing of Upton Cressett, my house in Shropshire, when it came to translating the Latin of Ovid chosen by Shakespeare as the epigraph of Venus and Adonis in 1593. Normally, I breeze through Marlowe’s translation. But after I got past "Let base-conceited wits admire vile things" my mind seized, like a batsman floundering at the crease. In my case, I blamed being tired after writing all day and then drinking a bottle of Tanners’ Shiraz (our house wine at the moment) with my father, having a lively discussion about the Brexit Party’s triumph in the European elections, which I argued put Boris Johnson in an almost unassailable lead to be the next Prime Minister regardless of the jealous sniping against him by fellow MPs. (A typical remark will be: “The closer you get to Boris, the less you know him.”). The truth is that, as MPs with marginal seats know, Boris is the Tory Party’s best electoral asset (like him or loathe him) and a showman “winner-takes-all” politician in the tradition of Reagan and Trump. Is he morally fit for the job of PM? As a Catholic, I’d like to think he has finally redeemed himself after the carnage he has inflicted on himself, his family and others. But I know many MPs are still hesitating to back him as they “simply don’t trust him”. My guess is that expediency and self-interest will win over any such qualms. I certainly hope so. After writing a defence of Boris when he was being written off by the bookies, I placed a bet with Fitzdares on Boris to be next PM at 8-1. He’s now 5-4 favourite.