In her first public comments since leaving Downing Street in 2020, the former aide also described how staff had set up a “puppy” barrier to prevent Johnson from leaving his office during periods of self-isolation. In an article for Tatler magazine, Ms Watson, who was brought into government by Dominic Cummings after working on the Vote Leave campaign in 2016, said: “My role in No 10 sounds fancy but I was often much closer to become. Boris’s nanny.” Providing an unflattering portrayal of her time in No 10, she said that when testing was limited at the start of the pandemic in 2020, she “generally” took the prime minister’s temperature to check for Covid symptoms. “It’s that time again, Prime Minister!” I would say. Each time, never missing a good opportunity, he dutifully pretended to crouch,” he wrote. Ms Watson also claimed she had to frequently reprimand the Prime Minister for “doing gags like ‘Kung Flu’ and ‘Hey! Corona!” during the pandemic. He said Mr Johnson was “pinged” a few times by the NHS Covid app, which at the time forced people to self-isolate for several days after coming into contact with someone who had tested positive for the virus. The Prime Minister, he said, “continued to work from his office downstairs while in isolation,” adding: “Pretty soon, this required chairs to be placed as door barriers as he could not resist crossing the threshold into the room next to us . looking over their shoulders at what people were working on (always with a pair of someone else’s reading glasses he had found lying around). Boris Johnson and Cleo Watson leave Downing Street in October 2020 (PA) “This is how the prime minister’s “puppy gate” was created. He was kneeling on the seats, his elbows resting on the top, like a big unruly golden retriever, screaming for attention.” Describing her own dismissal from No 10 in November 2020, Ms Watson claimed the Prime Minister told her in the Cabinet Room that she reminded him of Mr Cummings, who had quit the government two weeks earlier. “It’s like a marriage has ended, we’ve separated our things and I’ve kept an ugly old lamp. But every time I look at this lamp, it reminds me of the person I was with. You are that lamp.” He added: “As so many in politics know, the end comes sooner or later – generally sooner if you’re employed by this prime minister (although I guess the karma had an interesting return recently).” Comparing the Downing Street job to a nursery, she said: “That, plus the constant questioning of whether or not he had washed his hands (‘What do you mean ‘recently’?”), the nagging about his hair. , which made him look even more like one of those 1980s trolls in his daily televised press conferences, and the frequent rebuke that he made gags like “Kung Flu” and “Aye, Corona,” characterized many of the pre – scary. brush with death season in kindergarten. “During his recovery, the nanny came in leaps and bounds: insisting he drink vitamin-packed green juices from Daylesford instead of his usual Diet Coke. trying to find calendar time for his nap or very gradual exercise. I alternated between stern shaking and soothing words in response to his regular “I hate Covid now”. I want everything to go back to normal. Why is everything happening to meeeee?’ nervous breakdowns.” No 10 has been contacted for comment.
