SAY what you like about Boris Johnson, but he certainly has balls to go out running dressed like that.

Middle-aged pavement-pounders everywhere will have been heartened to note they are not the only ones to look like sweating fools while they are out throwing one creaking knee in front of the other.

Bermuda shorts, zip-up fleece and a skull-and-crossbones bandanna do not exactly make for anonymity. The headgear was a particular good touch.

Was this an attempt to disguise the famous blond hair or another bit of colourful attention grabbing?

I bring the Tory MP, TV personality, novelist and editor of the Spectator magazine before you not to mock his running gear.

Anyone who tries to keep one jogging step ahead of middle age has my vote; although, in this case, a theoretical vote and not a political one.

No, what's interesting is that the rise and fall of the Tory arts spokesman says much about politics at the moment.

His story is not complete but for now Boris has become that creature of political clich, the disgraced Tory MP.

The tale, as widely reported everywhere, has it that the father-of-four has been having an affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt, who is said to have had an abortion.

The details are not pretty and reflect badly on Boris. That a father of young children should he caught philandering will cause disapproval among many people.

Yet for all that, there is something odd about the way in which the Tory leader, Michael Howard, chose to eject the most flamboyant member of his shadow cabinet.

This is especially so as there hasn't exactly been a run on colour in the mono-hued Tory Party lately.

According to rippling rumours of the sort that usually prove to be true, the affair between Boris and his columnist had long been known about.

Tongues had apparently been wagging for ages, so Michael Howard can't really have been as surprised or outraged as he pretended to be.

If so, then perhaps Mr Howard did not get rid of Boris because of his extra-marital wanderings or what he omitted to mention.

He simply used the affair as an excuse to demote someone who sinned mostly by being more colourful, intelligent and interesting than the leader.

If this theory runs true, the affair was tolerated when Boris was considered beneficial to his party, and only became a sacking matter when he started to become a bit of an embarrassment.

To me, this says much about the phoney nature of politics, where any issue - moral or otherwise - is driven by narrow agendas that have little or nothing to do with the matter at hand.

In trying to second-guess how the media will play a story and how the public will react, our leaders fall over themselves to do what the headlines require.

There is an unseemly rush to gain advantage and grab the upper hand, all for the sake of that night's news or the next day's headlines.

Hence the accelerated way in which Boris Johnson lost his job - a job which, incidentally, seems a little out of proportion to all the fuss.

As for Boris himself, I guess he is more complicated than he appears. He is certainly far cleverer than suggested by his bumbling persona of loveable cartoon toff. He has the air of one who has been indulged by life, a creature of privilege who survives despite bumping into the furniture.

While not condoning his behaviour, I confess to a liking for the man as he appears on television and in pin-sharp print (he does write some exceedingly good columns for the Daily Telegraph).

Maybe, like everyone else, I've been fooled and there is a nasty, selfish Boris lurking beneath the artful bodger.

But in an age when politics seems to have become a matter mostly of boring process with sparring lawyer/politicians exchanging cranked-up outrage, Boris Johnson does at least seem like a real person - even when wearing a skull-and-crossbones bandanna.

Updated: 11:16 Thursday, November 18, 2004