Boris Johnson asks a fortune teller for a prediction live on TV and it couldn't go worse for him

Boris Johnson has been strangely absent from much of the Tory campaign for this snap general election.

The original plan was to keep him on the sidelines and make this election all about Theresa May – and that is mostly still the case – although the party has been forced to wheel Boris out a bit more in the final days of the election, recognising that he does draw quite large appeal from a lot of their voters.

Boris has been far from shy from criticising Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Asked to sum him up in less than 30 words, he called him “a Chavez-admiring curiously-vested leader of a sleeper cell of crypto-communists who piratically captured the Labour Party.” Tell us what you really think, Boris.

He’s also, in typical Boris fashion, made quite a few blunders, none more amusing than yesterday evening when he asked a fortune teller for a prediction for the election while live on ITV.

To say it didn’t exactly go as he hoped is an understatement.

He turns up at the door of a shop named Gipsy Acora in the West Country and asks the fortune teller and her husband for an official election forecast, and the husband immediately tells him it’ll be a Labour win.

It gets worse for Boris though, he then pushes the fortune teller herself for an answer, and she tells him: “I’m not gonna tell you for nothing, you’re ‘avin a laugh! You’re taking away me pension and me rights and then you come in and ask me for something for nothing!”

The whole exchange comes in good spirit, and the fortune teller is laughing her way through her jab at Johnson, but that doesn’t stop him very awkwardly trying to laugh it off as he turns away and tries to move the cameras on.

Maybe Boris will think twice the next time he asks for a prediction from a stranger live on air. It is Boris though, so don’t count on it.

Polling stations are open today, Thursday 8 June, between 7am and 10pm