Boris Johnson Playing Tennis

Submission 9,453

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About

Boris Johnson Playing Tennis refers to an image of British politician Boris Johnson playing a charity tennis match against Andy Murray which commenters have stated looks particularly humorous due to Johnson's facial expression and posture. The picture resurfaced in photoshops after Johnson was named UK Prime Minister.

Origin

On June 17th, 2013, Boris Johnson faced Andy Murray in a tennis match at The Queen's Club in London meant to raise money for Royal Marsden Hospital.^[1] Several images from that event were commented upon as being particularly awkward and humorous. Buzzfeed^[2] ran a listicle titled "11 Astonishingly Derpy Photos Of Boris Johnson Playing Tennis" after the match. One photo in particular would be used in future photoshops of Johnson (shown below).

Spread

The photo saw some spread over the following several years. On July 14th, 2016, the image was posted to /r/photoshopbattles^[3] in a thread that gained over 220 points (photoshop examples shown below). The original photo was posted to /r/FunnyandSad^[4] on June 14th, 2019 as it appeared that Johnson would become the next UK Prime Minister.

After Johnson became Prime Minister on July 22nd, 2019, the picture became much more popular online. A photoshop posted by forne104 which paired the picture against Donald Trump's Tennis Photo gained over 99,000 points in /r/pics^[5] (shown below, left). A post of the image in /r/photoshopbattles^[6] by Fr-Jack-Hackett gained over 31,000 points. The most popular photoshop in the thread, created by 241Baka,^[7] gained over 4,500 points (shown below, right).