Love Quote by Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson’s charm offensive has always leaned on a particular British trick: self-mockery that still manages to center the self. Here, the engine is comic bravado. He “loves tennis with a passion” (the safe, convivial premise), then pivots to an almost schoolboy name-drop - Boris Becker - before landing on the punchline: he could “make him run around.” It’s not meant to be credible. It’s meant to be legible: the speaker as cheeky striver, forever game for a scrap, even in a domain where he’d obviously be outclassed.

The subtext is social rather than athletic. Johnson performs the kind of entitlement that can masquerade as friendliness: the assumption that a world-famous champion is within one’s casual orbit, that a challenge is an amusing bit of banter rather than an imposition. Becker “never called back” supplies a neat bit of martyrdom - the powerful man lightly snubbed - while also insulating Johnson from the risk of actual humiliation on court. The fantasy match is a reputational win either way.

Context matters because politicians use sport as cultural shorthand for vigor and relatability. Tennis, especially, signals a certain class ease in Britain; it’s not football’s tribal authenticity but a cleaner, sunnier version of privilege. Johnson’s line tries to launder that privilege through jokes: a hint of laddish competitiveness, a wink at his own absurdity, and the reassuring message that he’s still the sort of man who would, at least in theory, chase the ball.