Delegates to the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester lapped up Boris Johnson’s wisecrack-filled speech on Wednesday, 2 October, but one Australian-born celebrity got the shock of his life when he found himself going viral as a result.
In his first conference speech as leader, Mr Johnson waxed lyrical about Britain’s export potential in a post-Brexit world: ”We already have some astonishing exports. Just in the last few months I have seen an Isle of Wight ship-builder that exports vast leisure catamarans to Mexico.”
He then said: “We export Jason Donovan CDs to North Korea. We exported Nigel Farage to America – though he seems to have come back.”
The Farage gag got plenty of chuckles among the Tory faithful but it was the allusion to Donovan which created a social media storm, with dozens of memes and jokes.
Donovan, 51, first found fame in the 1980s as the boyish star of Australian soap opera Neighbours along with his on-screen girlfriend Kylie Minogue.
The pair both moved to England and became pop stars, although Minogue’s success massively outweighed that of Donovan, who suit The Face magazine in 1992 after they wrongly suggested he was a homosexual. He won £200,000 in damages.
Donovan, who later battled drug addiction, bounced back in 2006 by appearing on a UK reality TV show and has continued to pump out music, much to the bemusement of critics and indeed the public.
But it turns out he is big in North Korea, according to the Prime Minister.
Who knew?