Boris Johnson ‘forgets passcode’: World’s most memorable celebrity mishaps and political gaffes

The Covid Inquiry - which is to be aided by WhatsApp messages buried in Boris Johnson’s phone - may be stalled due to the former Prime Minister ‘forgetting his password’, reports suggest.

The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group has branded the move a ‘complete joke’ and many have questioned the convenience of Bojo’s absentmindedness. But this is far from the first time a celebrity or politician has been ridiculed for an explanation.

Being a celebrity and being accountable is much like twins sharing the same umbilical cord but sometimes the problem with being in the spotlight is that it’s just too damn bright.

From Dominic Cummings’ Barnard Castle blunder to Rebekah Vardy’s agent dropping her phone in the sea to hide evidence, we’ve taken a deep dive into the most memorable mishaps and convenient one-liners from the world of fame.

Dominic Cummings breaks self-isolation to ‘test his eyesight’ 

Cast your mind back to 2020. A number of laws were quickly ushered in to accommodate the public’s newly-imposed life in lockdown - one of which gave police and officials powers to fine anyone in breach of the rules.

To cap the chaos and prohibit those desperately wanting a change of scenery, UK citizens were told they could not leave their homes without a “reasonable excuse”.

During the lockdown, the government confirmed that Dominic Cummings had displayed symptoms of Covid-19 and was self-isolating at home. However, they failed to mention that Boris Johnson’s former aide had made a 260-mile journey to Durham, to isolate at a house on his parents’ land.

Questions understandably poured in when Mr Cummings was spotted over a week later on a lockdown-busting expedition to Bernard Castle. The political strategist claimed he made the journey to ‘test his eyesight’.

In a press conference, he said: “We agreed to go for a short drive to see if I could drive safely. I drove for roughly half an hour and we ended up on the outskirts of Barnard Castle town.”

That’s quite the test.

Caroline Watts’ fishy’ excuse in the Wagatha Christie trial 

The Wagatha Christie trial saw Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy go head to head in a libel case at the English High Court. Rooney accused Vardy of leaking posts from her private Instagram account to the British press. Vardy then sued Rooney for libel - but eventually lost.

Rooney’s lawyers said they’d asked to search the phone of Vardy for WhatsApp conversations, which they believed held ‘incriminating’ messages. However, on the final day of the trial Rooney’s team alleged there had been a concerted effort to ‘destroy’ the evidence.

Rebekah Vardy’s agent, Caroline Watts, stepped in to reassure everyone involved. Conveniently, the phone could not be provided as evidence… because it was lying on the bottom of the North Sea.

Watts claimed the phone ‘fell’ into the sea during a family holiday around the Scottish coastline. This set the stage for a rare courtroom quip from Rooney’s barrister, David Sherborne.

“The story is fishy enough – and no pun intended,” he said.

Nigel Farage blames being late on immigrants clogging up the motorway 

Due to appear at a Welsh conference hosted by his former party UKIP, Nigel Farage was nowhere to be seen and forced to apologise for his lateness. The supposed ‘man of the people’ said the drive took him double the length of time due to traffic on the M4.

However, his reasoning paired with a strangely specific ‘back in my day’ remark bewildered MPs, who labelled the claim as ‘absurd’.

Addressing the length of the journey, Farage said: “That has nothing to do with professionalism. What is does have to do with is a country in which the population is going through the roof, chiefly because of open-door immigration, and the fact the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be.”

Labour’s Owen Smith replied: “It is clearly absurd to suggest heavy traffic on the M4 is caused by immigration, but through the laughter at his silly comments you can hear Ukip’s dog-whistle politics of division.”

Oh Nigel, we’ve all been there but just say you forgot your keys next time…

David Cameron couldn’t name the price of a loaf of bread

Politicians are often criticised for being out of touch. And in other news, David Cameron says he likes using an electronic breadmaker.

The former PM appeared on LBC 97.3 to clarify the Consevative’s stance on shrinking household budgets across the UK but no-one expected the line of questioning to be this tough.

Presenter Nick Ferrari asked Mr Cameron to name the price of a ‘value sliced white bread loaf at Tesco or Sainsbury’s’. He said: “I don’t buy the value sliced loaf, I’ve got a breadmaker at home which I delight in using and it turns out in all sorts of different ways.

“But you can buy a loaf in the supermarket for well north of a pound,” Mr Cameron added.

The LBC host stepped in and quickly told the PM, the true cost was about 47p.

Biden asking a wheelchair-bound senator to ‘stand up’ 

This is one that would keep anyone awake at night, let alone the President of the United States. In 2008, Biden appeared at a Presidential campaign rally and attempted to give a special mention to Sen. Chuck Graham of Columbia.

“Chuck, stand up, let the people see you,” Biden says. After the sudden realisation hit that Sen. Graham uses a wheelchair, Biden recovered and told the crowd to stand up instead.

He added: “Oh, God love you. What am I talking about. I’ll tell you what, you’re making everybody else stand up, though, pal.”

Contactless card machine 1: 0 Rishi Sunak 

Rishi Sunak was mocked for making an embarrassing contactless card blunder at a Sainsbury’s petrol station. At a post spring statement photo opportunity, the then-chancellor appeared to try and pay for a can of Coke by scanning his debit card on the barcode reader.

The hilarious footage shows the kind-hearted till worker gesture to the soft drink, before Mr Sunak eventually realised he needed to scan the barcode

US VP Dan Quayle misspells potato during a school spelling bee

There’s one rule in life that teachers can attest to - if you screw up around children, they will not let you forget it. Unfortunately for Vice President Dan Quayle, neither did the whole country.

In 1992, Quayle visited an elementary school in New Jersey to lead a spelling bee for sixth-grade students. Working from an inaccurate flash card pre-prepared by one of the teachers, Quayle confidently corrected a 12-year-old’s spelling of ‘potato’ to ‘potatoe’.

Following the incident, the VP was grilled by journalists and it became routine to quiz the 45-year-old on his spelling. The political gaffe was also caught on video and routinely replayed on news channels.

An excerpt from Quayle’s 1994 memoir, ‘Standing Firm’, reads: “No one ever actually asked me to spell potato that afternoon.  If they had, I imagine I’d have gotten it right…”

The evidence says otherwise Dan.