Boris Johnson, always full-throated, rarely faint-hearted, looked to have over-stepped the mark yesterday when his enthusiasm to score in a game of street rugby against Japanese children saw him send a small boy crashing to the ground.
Mr Johnson was on the last day of his visit to Japan, where for three days he has moved serenely from one photo opportunity to the next. There was the snack of “octopus balls” which he sampled in Osaka. (“It was the only part of the animal they had,” he explained later.)
He waltzed with a comely actress and donned a happi coat to broach a ceremonial sake barrel. Then, he played rugby.
He may have envisioned, as he ran towards the touch line, a usefully positive picture caption (“Boris scores for London”), but that was reckoning without the determination of 10-year old Toki Sekiguchi.
Boris charged; young Toki held his ground; the two collided. There was no doubt who came off worst. “I accidentally flattened a 10-year old — on TV unfortunately,” he told an audience of Tokyo business people.
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“He bounced back. A smile very rapidly returned to his face. And that is the theme of my remarks to you, that however grim you may be, confidence can unexpectedly return.”