Painting buses, reading bonkbusters and playing tennis against a machine, are just a few of the ways British prime ministers have said they unwind and “chillax”.
Rishi Sunak is said to be a keen gamer, a big fan of Jilly Cooper’s novel Riders, which he reads to relax, and a decent cricketer. As chancellor, he admitted to being a fan of “collecting Coca-Cola things”, telling two sniggering school pupils: “I am a Coke addict. I am a total Coke addict.”
In the run-up to her 49-day stint as prime minister, Liz Truss professed a number of times her passion for karaoke. She is known to have the Dirty Dancing anthem (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes in her repertoire, having been spotted in 2021 singing it at a party conference fringe event in Manchester.
Boris Johnson claimed to enjoy “making things”, including model buses. In an interview with Talk Radio, Johnson said: “What I make is … I get old, I don’t know, wooden crates, and I paint them. It’s a box that’s been used to contain two wine bottles, right, and it will have a dividing thing. And I turn it into a bus.
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“So I put passengers – I paint the passengers enjoying themselves on a wonderful bus – low-carbon, of the kind that we brought to the streets of London, reducing CO2, reducing nitrous oxide, reducing pollution.”
Other prime ministers have less fanciful and more ordinary pastimes. Theresa May favoured going on holiday, long walks and cooking. In his book, David Cameron revealed how he often practised tennis with a machine he calls “the Clegger”, after his deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair was known for his skills on the guitar, and John Major was also a cricket enthusiast.
