How to not be able to live on £150k, by Boris Johnson

DO YOU think you could live comfortably on the prime minister’s £150,000 salary? Think again. Boris Johnson explains how hard it is: 

Go through divorce

The breakdown of a marriage is as expensive as it is painful, especially if your estranged partner is a barrister who knows exactly how to bend you over a barrel financially, has copious dirt and knows all the journalists who hate you.

Cost: £42,000

Hire a really expensive nanny

Like Linda Evangelista, nannies don’t get out of bed for less than ten grand a day. That’s why they cruise around in sports cars and wear Tiffany & Co jewellery all the time. Well, that’s not the starting salary, but when you’re paying off a nanny a month after your indiscretions get picked up on the baby monitor, it adds up.

Cost: £29,000

Have lots of kids

Speaking of kids, these things are money sponges. Have an indeterminate number of sprogs and they’re always after school shoes, school fees, all that shut. If only there was someone with the power to ease the financial strain on parents. That would be so useful to me.

Cost: £52,000

Be detached from reality

A life of privilege and inherited wealth really underlines how much of a pittance £150k really is. I’m surprised part-time shelf-stackers can survive on half that. It would be truly criminal if anyone in our world-beating society was earning even a third of this measly sum.

Cost: £23,000

Lack planning skills

When faced with a challenge, whether that’s balancing the books or preventing a pandemic, I tend to laugh it off or launch unrealistic operations with stupid names. Try these strategies in your personal life and things will quickly fall apart, even if you’ve been raking it in from the Telegraph for years.

Cost: £60,000

Total: I don’t add up. Haven’t since prep school. Send it to Rishi and tell him to come up with a figure I like the look of.