YOU wonder if Boris Johnson ever manages to have a normal conversation using normal speech.

I get it. He wants to sound like a great, Churchillian orator. But Churchill was warming up the crowds in the 1940s and 1950s. Johnson sounds like he's not realised this is 2020 - not only have times changed but we didn't all go to Eton.

To give a recent example, what he wants to say is, "Thanks to science, we have a vaccine."

What he actually says is, "We have been... hoping for the day when the searchlights of science would pick out our invisible enemy... scientists have used the virus itself to perform a kind of biological jiu-jitsu." Have they, aye?

I can't imagine him at home speaking to baby Wilfred. Where your average mum or dad might read their child Goodnight Moon, old Boris is all about the bells and whistles. "And I say to you, farewell, farewell great luminescent orb of nighttime lustre."

At this stage of 2020 it feels like very little can come as a surprise. But Boris Johnson is a man who likes to rise to the challenge with his startling oratory.

All he had to do at the weekend was give a speech to the Climate Ambition summit, a virtual climate summit organised by the UK, UN and France taking place on the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate agreement.

It's a fairly big deal and yet another occasion where the UK would like, just for once, to look sensible and statesmanship in front of its neighbours. Not a chance.

I had the radio on and there came Boris's familiar tones. After rhyming off the UK's specific ambitions to make the country greener and more environmentally friendly, the speech took a downward spiral.

“We are doing this not," the Prime Minister said, "Because we are hair shirt-wearing, tree-hugging mung bean-munching eco freaks."

Whoah now. Tree huggers? Forget the 1950s, we've shot forward to the 1970s friends. Eco freaks? Was this really a speech written in advance rather than a mortifying off the cuff spew of verbal vomit from someone who forgot the company he was in?

Mr Johnson seemed to acknowledge he'd put a foot in it and added, "Although I’ve got nothing against any of those categories and mung beans are probably delicious." Oh pal, it's too late for that.

You've well and truly scuppered it.

The backdrop is of a failure to have resolved a Brexit deal, of needing yet another extension because your "oven ready deal" turned out to be more like some ingredients ready to be simmered in a slow cooker.

We have the chance to at least look a little bit sensible on the world stage and instead we sling outdated, offensive slurs that undermine the very principle of the conference. Read the room Boris.

This matters for Glasgow because we are about to host COP26. The eyes of the world will be on our city and we want to make a good impression. We know we can, because we've done recently.

The 2014 Commonwealth Games allowed the city to shine - and so, hopefully, will COP26. What I wonder is, can we lock Boris Johnson in a cupboard?

It's only 12 days and we can make sure he's well fed during that time. We could give him a copy of the Iliad in Greek to read to help him pass the time. Let's be honest, would the cabinet even miss him? Would the country? He went AWOL at the height of the coronavirus pandemic and no one seemed that bothered.

Joking aside, it seems unimaginable that a prime minister making a speech to an international conference addressing the perils of climate change would make a string of cheap digs about environmentalists.

This isn't Piers Morgan getting his undies in a bunch about vegan sausage rolls. This is the top boss, the man in charge, on one hand saying that we need to take drastic action to limit the damage our country is doing to the planet... and on the other hand calling the people who are already proactively taking the right steps "freaks".

People get extremely agitated about vegans. They get wound up about cyclists.

We need a rethink. I love vegans because they're making the planet better for everyone without me having to give up cheese.

I cycle as often as I can but I still take the car to the supermarket. A woman cycled in front of me the other day pulling a trolley of shopping and carrying a huge backpack.

Someone beeped their horn in annoyance at having to slow down. Why be annoyed? The more people there are on their bikes, the more the damage done by your Range Rover is being cancelled out.

These are the good people, the people trying to change the world for the better - even for the lazy guzzlers who won't forgo dairy.

Eco freak? Eco heroes, and the sooner Boris Johnson works that out the better.