‘Clearly, people are more interested in their grub and cartoon penguins than they are in reliving Johnson’s political blundering.’
Despite all the fanfare including spending days touring TV studios and hosting a glamorous launch, Boris Johnson’s book about his time as London mayor, foreign secretary, and prime minister, hasn’t got off to the best of starts.
Here’s how his book Unleashed flopped in the first few days.
Outsold by books about penguins and gut health
The No10 memoir quickly slid down Amazon’s bestseller list, losing out to Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson’s new picture book about a penguin and a food guide about gut health.
A source told the Mirror: “Clearly, people are more interested in their grub and cartoon penguins than they are in reliving Johnson’s political blundering. The title had been tipped to be a big seller, promising an “honest” and “deeply revealing account of a politician who has dominated our times.”
Not on sale in Europe because of Brexit
Boris Johnson played a leading role in implementing the trade barriers between Britain and the single market. But his book Unleashed, which hit the UK bookshops on October 10, is facing delays in being shipped to Europe due to such trade barriers.
An assistant manager at Waterstones in Brussels said the book had yet to arrive at the store.
“It didn’t arrive and it’s because of Brexit. It’s ironic,” they said, adding that British books take around a week longer to reach the EU market due to extra checks at the border that were introduced after Brexit.
Upstaged by a parody
It hasn’t been plain sailing for Unleashed on UK bookshop shelves either. A parody version of the book entitled ‘Unhinged’ has been placed next to Johnson’s book in a number of stores, including Waterstones and WH Smiths.
Author Ian Martin, who wrote the hit BBC series The Thick of It, describes his send-up of the former PM as ‘the perfect book for that selfish egomaniac in your life…’
Unhinged became something of a sensation on social media with images of the books next to each other in the leading bookstores going viral.
Readers don’t believe key claims in the book
In another blow for Johnson, it was revealed this week that many readers don’t believe several of the key claims in the book in spite of the book promising an “honest” account of events during his time at No 10.
A new YouGov poll shows just 35 percent said they believed the claim that David Cameron had warned Johnson it would “f*** you up forever if he did not support Remain during the Brexit referendum.” The rest of the poll said they did not believe him or did not know.
Johnson claimed that those were the former PM’s “exact words,” but Cameron hit back saying that it finds it “hard to believe” himself but that “recollections differ.”
In relation to Covid, the poll found just 34 percent believed Johnson’s claim that Donald Trump had sent representatives with unlicensed drugs to offer to “revive” the then PM while he was in intensive care.
A similar number believed the part of the book where he wrote that the Queen had bone cancer for a year before her death. An even fewer number thought the claim that Buckingham Palace had asked Johnson to try to convince Prince Harry to stay in the UK was true and he was encouraged to give the Duke of Sussex a “manly pep talk” to persuade him not to leave. Just 30 percent believed Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu had bugged Johnson’s private bathroom.
Outdone by penguins, blocked by Brexit, and eclipsed by a parody, Boris Johnson’s memoir may have to work a little harder to become the “honest” bestseller it was promised to be.
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