Shiver me timbers Boris!

The signs have been there for days, if only anyone had cared enough to notice. The extramarital affair. The ever-growing list of eccentricities. The way he seemed to have stopped caring about his appearance - and now this, one of the more startling bandanna-and-shorts combos to be seen on the streets of London this year.

So here is the former Tory shadow minister for the arts, dressed for a run in clothes that might just about pass muster on an 17-year-old Cornish surfer. But the erstwhile vice-chairman of the Conservative Party? The editor of The Spectator, house magazine of the tweedwearing classes? Possibly not.

This, after all, is a 40-year-old father of four, a chap prone to use such phrases as "cracking form" and "pyramid of piffle". Not a man generally associated with skull-and-crossbones bandannas.

If Boris really is beginning to lose the plot, the symptoms were beginning to show last week when he appeared to venture out in the same suit - a grey two-piece, worn with a burgundy jumper - several days running. His riposte at the time was that he was "a man of thrift and economy".

That may indeed have been true - but seen in the light of his decision today to dress like someone who has just been riding the big breakers at Bondi Beach (when he knew full well that photographers and camera crews were waiting to ambush him as soon as he stepped out of his front door), one has to ask whether the pressure has finally got to the MP for Henley.

He certainly seemed somewhat on edge just over 24 hours after he was sacked by Michael Howard. He emerged in his flowery shorts and cream fleece from his ?1million Highgate home at 7.30, when he spotted the cameramen and turned back. His wife Marina then came out to say he had left by another exit. "I think you've missed him," she said. But Boris was spotted running down the street. On being cornered, he grumbled: "I advise you all very strongly: go for a run, get some exercise and have a beautiful day."

He then returned to find the door locked. From the inside. Asked if he felt unfairly treated after being sacked for lying about his affair with columnist Petronella Wyatt, 35, he said: "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds."

By this time his normally undentable sense of humour was beginning to desert him. Challenged on claims that he misled Mr Howard, he said: "No, I certainly didn't. Will you kindly hop it?"

Among the few words of solace to cheer him up was this message from his father Stanley, who is on a charity trip in the Brazilian rainforest. "If it is of any comfort," he said, "in this part of the Amazon even the darkest skies have a habit of clearing by midday."

By which time Boris will have his shorts on again, no doubt.