Read it in the First Post
By Danielle Dsane
Roles have been cast in a More 4 docu-drama about Boris Johnson, David Cameron and the circles the pair mixed in at Eton and Oxford. Scripted by Toby Young, of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People fame, When Boris met Dave will tell how the Mayor of London and the Prime Minister-in-waiting got to know each other, first at the country's most socially prestigious school, and then amongst the restaurant-trashing Bullingdon Club elite.
Both part of the Bullingdon class of 1987, Johnson (above left, with Cameron) has spoken of "dark deeds involving plastic cones and letterboxes", and recounted one incident in which he ended up "crawling through hedges trying to escape police dogs" after someone threw a plant pot through a window. Cameron, on the other hand, generally tries to avoid the subject.
Jonny Sweet, a little-known 24-year-old comic who will perform a one-man show at the Edinburgh festival next month, has been cast as Cameron. Christian Brassington, a 26-year-old actor who previously played the lead role in Tony Blair: Rock Star, about the former Prime Minister's undergraduate days, will scruff up his hair and dye it blond to play Johnson.
Channel Four, which runs digital channel More 4, has had considerable success with political drama over the last few years, and the tone isn't generally deferential. In 2003, Stephen Frears directed Michael Sheen as Blair in The Deal, which imagined how Blair, over a supper at Granita restaurant in Islington, persuaded Gordon Brown to let him have the first stab at the Labour party leadership.
When Boris met Dave has already been criticised by one Tory. Philip Davies, MP for Shipley in Yorkshire, has said that Channel Four was open to "accusations they are pursuing an agenda" in the run-up to the next general election. Hamish Mykura, controller of More 4, told the Independent that he thinks the film will show Cameron, Johnson and their set "pretending to be people that they weren't".
Mykura said: "Even though Boris is the one who's always highlighted as the toff, he's someone who in some ways wasn't to the manor born, he was adopting that personality, whereas Dave, who was from that upper echelon, was playing it down far more when he was at university."