Inside the Foreign Office: Believe it or not, this clip of Boris Johnson isn't a parody

Despite seeming like it's been taken form an episode of The Thick of It, this video of Boris Johnson talking to one of his advisors while he was foreign secretary isn't in fact parody.

The clip is taken from BBC Two series Inside The Foreign Office, which offers behind-the-scenes and often gaffe-strewn footage from Johnson's time in office.

In this clip, Johnson can be seen talking to an advisor, europe director at the Foreign Office, Caroline Wilson, about a speech on his ministerial plane en route to a visit to Lisbon and Paris in October 2017.

In the opening, he says:

It's too boring, it needs more gags.

He then attempts to read out the speech in broken French, which Wilson appears to struggle to understand.

She says:

It might just be better to stick to the headlines in French, or it might get lost in translation...

He responds:

They love it, they love it when I talk French.

Johnson then asks the civil servants why the French are 'trying to shaft us' during Brexit negotiations.

Wilson looks unamused, and attempts to explain to him what's going on.

We think they maybe feel that they could contribute to work with us on the global strategic issues, while seeking to get advantage on economic issues, possibly, in the near future.

That's when cake gets involved.

Needless to say, the Twitterati found the whole thing distinctly surreal, and struggled to accept that it was not, in fact, a parody.

Some wondered why Wilson wasn't foreign secretary, as she's obviously far more clued up.

While one summed it up perfectly.