Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson likened Russian President Vladimir Putin to a “fat boy” from a Charles Dickens novel in a characteristically thoughtful take on the threat of nuclear war on Wednesday. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the disgraced U.K. leader said: “Putin wants to present it as a nuclear standoff between NATO and Russia. Nonsense. He’s not going to use nuclear weapons, OK. He’s like the fat boy in Dickens, he wants to make our flesh creep. He wants us to think about it. He’s never going to do it.” The comment was an apparent reference to Dickens’ 1836 debut novel, The Pickwick Papers, in which a servant child referred to as a fat boy tells an old woman “I wants to make your flesh creep” before divulging the details of a shocking revelation.
