IT’S LUCKY you can’t die of smugness otherwise BBC interviewer Eddie Mair would have been fitted up for his wooden overcoat years ago.

But I still don’t understand just why 600 numpties rang the Beeb to complain about him asking Boris Johnson a few pertinent questions last Sunday.

The interview, in which Mair grilled Boris about his dodgy journalism, string of alleged affairs and a phone conversation in which he agreed to give the name of another journalist to his fraudster mate, Darius Guppy, so Guppy could beat him up (no evidence has emerged that anyone ever took any action on this BTW) was described as a car crash for Bozza.

And? Eddie’s a respected journalist and Boris is a politician who, whatever he says, would appear to be gasping to become our next Prime Minister. On that basis alone he should be grilled like a barbecue sausage because it’s our right to see those who would lead us explain themselves in public.

Boris thinks so too. “If BBC presenters can’t have a bash at a nasty Tory politician, what is the world coming to,” he chortled.

I hope his enemies were listening because, in that one sentence, he explained just why he defies all the laws of politics and gravity to be our most popular and best-known politico.

It’s because he’s a Good Sport.

Like Doing Your Bit and saying sorry when someone steps on your foot, being a Good Sport is one of the fundamental British values. It means playing the game, smiling when you lose, and being able to laugh off a joke.

And Boris has turned it into an art form. We’re so used to politicians with skin like a butterfly’s wing; denying they said whatever it is we heard them say, lying about their ambitions and their expenses and flying deliciously off the handle at the slightest thing, that his calculated bumbling, messy appearance and irrepressible good humour stand out like a neon beacon.

The reason we love Kirstie Allsopp and David Walliams and Frank Bruno is because they are good sports par excellence.

It’s why we’re warming to UKIP leader Nigel Farage and Camilla Cornwall (yes, really!) why we can’t abide Tony Blair and Nick Clegg and why the Queen’s decision to take part in that James Bond skit at the Olympics so delighted us all.

Instead of criticising Boris, his enemies should learn from him. And instead of complaining about Eddie Mair, Boris’s supporters should congratulate him on giving their man yet another chance to ingratiate himself with the public who so clearly adore him.