Having spoken Latin to Boris Johnson, and danced the dab in front of Theresa May, extraterrestrial candidate Count Binface is now making a bid to be London Mayor.
The conversation with Count Binface, phoning from his “mothership in orbit” was something reminiscent of Eduardo Mendoza’s No Word From Gurb.
He explained his reason for wanting to bring an intergalactic flavour to proceedings in ‘the Earth capital’ was partly born out of taking on Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan.
He said: “I believe there is literally no-one on the ballot paper apart from me who has the skill, the retitling potential to challenge Mr Khan and the wrath of Khan is something I am prepared to take on!”
Binface, aged 5965 (although he says the last count was over 6000 years ago), has launched his mayoral manifesto with pledges for London to join the European Union and renaming London Bridge to actress Phoebe Waller, and has already raised £2,715 via a crowdfunding campaign.
He is working towards his £10,000 target to stand as mayor, and will otherwise stand for the London Assembly or in a local constituency if he doesn’t find enough money to pay the “idiot tax”.
He is no stranger to politics, having come visor to eye with the last two British Prime Ministers as a General Election candidate.
In the 2017 election he danced the dab as Lord Buckethead, while standing against former Prime Minister May in Maidenhead.
Binface said: “She was polite, but when I did my celebratory dab Channel 4 news caught her like, well, like a sour bitter lemon who’d just run through a wheatfield.”
In 2019, after “a battle on planet copyright” with American filmmaker Todd Durham, over the Lord Bucketface name, he shared the platform with Johnson in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in 2019.
Binface explained that he caught the Prime Minister before the results were announced.
He said: “I thought I should talk to the Prime Minister in the only language that Boris would understand, which is of course Latin. I quoted the great Julius Caesar.
“Someone said ‘Are you going to get Brexit done now Boris?’, and then I said ‘Ah! Alea iacta est (the die is cast) Boris!’
“I was effectively running not just against the Prime Minister but against myself.
“I told Boris this and he genuinely sounded intrigued and concerned and I genuinely believe he gave that as much attention as he did the Irish border and the Dover-Calais crossing over Brexit.”
More recently, Binface wrote to the Prime Minister to offer his then special adviser Dominic Cummings laser surgery to improve his eyesight, and he said he is open to the prospect of heading a government of National Unity with him.
He remarked: “I offered to correct his eye problem with laser surgery, but if I were to miss his eye and zap his brain it would be a 100% success.
“If he needs me and if he wants to call on my services, a government of national unity with me at the top of it is something that I would be prepared to consider.”
Becoming Count Binface was, aside from a trademark dispute, a chance to renounce his peerage he said, given his distaste for the House of Lords.
Speaking of Britain’s unelected upper chamber, he said: “I am just a humble alien but to me, the House of Lords looks like the most corrupt second chamber of any democratic nation in any planet in the galaxy, it’s a f***king joke.
“Boris has just shoved a few more of his cronies in there, and a cricketer just because he voted for Brexit, its madness and it has got to stop!”
He suggested throwing in some of Britain’s previous political figures: “You want people like your sort of William Hagues, someone like Theresa May, John Major would be quite good – what I mean people who’ve been there, done it and lost it.
“They could learn from their mistakes and perhaps withdraw their decisions. I would call it the House of Losers!”
Another one of his favourite promises was to relaunch Ceefax, the Teletext service offered by the BBC until 2012, a pledge which won him the Guardian’s “Best Policy” award in 2017.
Speaking of its praises, he said: “It was like the internet but more glorious, more multicoloured, more factual, fewer trolls, and all one-way traffic so the news would come down to the earth, which means people could take it but they wouldn’t have the opportunity to write their stream of sh*t back.
“Not only was it giving you the news but it was loving you, in such a blissful way that I find humans need to stop them storming Parliament buildings.”
Binface connects with earth via his human avatar, or creator Jon Harvey, a London-based comedian with whom he is working to write a new book, to be released in autumn this year.
However, unlike his human counterpart, Binface doesn’t watch Star Wars as he said: “I’m not into documentaries myself.”
“On my planet I’ll do what I bloody well like”
Besides his occupation as an “independent space warrior”, he gets up to stargazing, dancing and playing three-dimensional zero-G crazy golf.
On Covid, he was keen to point out his role as an early pioneer in mask wearing, as well as keeping a safe distance.
He said: “I’ve been keeping a safe distance of two miles in orbit at all times in my mothership away from your planet.
“Basically I am doing exactly what Chris Whitty would tell me to do and what Cummings would do if he had half a chance, ie get the f**k out of dodge mate. But I don’t have any children and I don’t need to test my eyesight so everything is fine.”
He insists that on earth he is a law abider, and will get a vaccine, although he thinks the government target to vaccinate four people every minute is steep without the help of darts players.
He suggested: “Who would be the most qualified people on the planet to deliver such shots? It’s Phil the power Taylor, it’s Dave Chissy Chisnall, it’s Peter Wright, it’s Gary Anderson, get them in! You could televise it, you could make millions, it would pay for itself. It’s a win-win!”
But he admitted: “On my planet, I’ll do what I bloody well like.”
You can check out all of the candidates for the London Mayor election here.
Main image credit: Count Binface
