The Evening Standard gave me a job – and unleashed Boris Johnson on the world. I’ll still miss it

It was never completely clear which Londoners the paper had in mind. The comment pages were full of people who lived in the Cotswolds and knew exactly what should be done about Kosovo. The Friday magazine, meanwhile, had some imagined reader who had all the money in the world, and spent it all on the gee-gees. He or she thought hard about Canaletto, but also about black leggings.