Cleo Watson, who worked at Number 10 as deputy chief of staff, has also described her role as a “nanny” who had to take the prime minister’s temperature in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic and ask him if he had washed his hands of . When he insisted on working downstairs after being “taken away”, a barrier was put up between his office and the one next door because he “couldn’t resist going over the threshold”, Ms Watson said. He added: “Thus the Prime Minister’s ‘puppy gate’ was created”, as part of a “fair amount of house training”. Mrs Watson continued: “He was kneeling on the seats, his elbows resting on the top, like a big unruly golden retriever, screaming for attention.” As she took his temperature, “brandishing an oral, digital thermometer”, Ms Watson found that the prime minister, “never one to miss a good opportunity, dutifully pretended to bend over”. During Mr Johnson’s recovery from a severe bout of COVID, during which he spent a stint in intensive care, Ms Watson said she encouraged him to drink “vitamin-packed green juices instead of his usual Diet Coke” and take time in his “naps” diary. or very gradual exercise’. He even made him “sit down when he reached the top of Downing Street’s famous yellow stairs to catch his breath before a meeting”. Referring to that time, she said: “I alternated between a stern shake and soothing words in response to his regular, ‘I hate COVID now. I want everything back to normal. Why is everything happening to meeeeeee?” nervous breakdowns.” Image: Cleo Watson with Dominic Cummings in Downing Street in October 2019 In an article for Tatler magazine, Ms Watson refers to an upcoming Sky drama about the early stages of the government’s response to the pandemic. He writes: “If they manage to capture even half of the horrific out-of-body experience of standing outside the Prime Minister’s office, watching live news footage from hospital parking lots full of gurneys in Lombardy, or the sheer bravery of Carrie. pregnant and considering the possibility that she may lose the father of her soon-to-be first-born child as a nation watched, then it’s going to be a fruitful awards season for all concerned.” Johnson is played by Sir Kenneth Branagh, whose transformation is “uncanny”, Ms Watson said, referring to the “stance, hair, beaky nose and beagle-like cheeks”. Ms Watson started at Downing Street in 2019 after being brought in by Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings. He left in November 2020, about two weeks after Mr Cummings himself left. In the Tatler article, Mrs Watson refers to a conversation she had with Mr Johnson before he left. “She said a lot of things, the most succinct being ‘I can’t look at you anymore because you remind me of Dom. It’s like a marriage is over, we’ve separated our things and I’ve kept an ugly old lamp. But every time I look at that lamp, it reminds me of the person I was with. You are that lamp.”
