This month, The Spectator becomes the first magazine in history to print 10,000 issues,

and we'd like to celebrate with you.

Subscribe to The Spectator for 12 weeks for just £12.

Plus, we'll send you a bottle of commemorative Spectator gin, absolutely free.

Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash celebrate.

Hello and welcome to the spectator's audio reads.

This week is the Easter special.

First, we have Toby Young.

Britain needs you, Boris. Toby Young.

As I write, Boris Johnson is in intensive care at St Thomas's Hospital, battling with coronavirus.

For someone with such an unwavering belief in his own destiny, this must be profoundly difficult. He's a man who's

beaten the odds over and over, to become mayor of London in a Labour city, to lead the leave

campaign to victory in the teeth of overwhelming opposition, to become Prime Minister in spite of all

his personal baggage, and then to win the largest conservative

majority since 1987.

Here is a man who cannot stare into the jaws of defeat without grabbing hold of victory

with both hands.

Yet the odds of him triumphing, in this case, keep narrowing.

Of those who've caught the virus aged 50 to 59, Boris is 55, their chances

of requiring hospitalisation are only one in ten, and just 12% of that fraction end up in intensive

care. A hundred to one against, and he's still drawn the short straw. Once a COVID-19 patient has been admitted to intensive care,

their chances of coming out are close to 50-50. It's his sense of public duty that has landed him

...