The National:

"BORIS Johnson? Bus? We've heard it all before," I hear you say.

Alas, this Boris Johnson bus story does not involve £350 million being given to the NHS every week when we leave the EU.

READ MORE: Boris Johnson: I make models of buses to relax

Yesterday in a bizarre moment on talkRADIO Boris Johnson finally decided to open up about his private life. Asked what he does for pleasure (oo-er) in his spare time, the former mayor of London revealed his secret to the world ... he makes model buses out of wooden wine crates and paints "the passengers enjoying themselves on the wonderful bus".

During the answer, Johnson gives a long-winded description about the "dividing" things he uses and how great the wooden buses' low-carbon abilities are (which begs the question of whether these bus models have genuine automation capabilities). Even the interviewer gives a less-than-enthusiastic "yeah" in response to the candidate's rambling.

But was the incident all it appeared to be? Initially, social media took the claim at face value, storing it in their brains as yet another example of the crazy kooky stuff Johnson does – ha! So random! So weird!

Today, the mood has shifted somewhat. Some don't believe Johnson was being serious at all. Guardian and Observer writer Hannah Jane Parkinson put up a Twitter thread theorising that the whole thing is a "piss take".

And here's another conspiracy theory. Could the answer be a strategic attempt to change what we think of when we hear the words "Boris" and "bus"? No longer will those pesky think pieces on the Leave bus linger at the top of Google search results. Instead, articles portraying the Brexiteer as a lovable weirdo will appear on screens. It's worth thinking about ...