Bozza goes Awol as Ken cranks up the PR war

Since he won the Tory nomination on 28 September, Conservative activists have been watching his lackadaisical campaign with incredulity. "Where's Bozza?" they cried. "Why isn't he pummelling the hated Livingstone and seizing England's capital from its Labour occupiers?"

Answer came there none for from 28 September to 13 November not one press release was posted on his official website. To be fair, Johnson did conduct web polls to get into the minds of Londoners. But as he asked us last month to name our favourite London park - Hyde Park won, if you must know - and is trying this month to find out which season we like best, he's hardly at the cutting edge of political intelligence gathering.

In the past fortnight, there's been more activity - the odd statement on London issues and an appearance on Johnny Vaughan's breakfast show on Capital FM. There's more to come, but he's a long way from gruelling electioneering.

In truth, we haven't seen much of Johnson because he's been off with a camera crew around various Middle Eastern locations filming a series on Islam to the consternation of George Osborne and David Cameron, who began to wonder whether Johnson wants to be Mayor badly enough to fight for it. Conservative journalists and bloggers have been primed to nudge him into action by writing that anonymous "senior party figures" detected a "worrying drift" in the campaign.

The public explanation for his dilettantism is that Johnson doesn't have to campaign because he is a celebrity the public think of in first-name terms. He isn't "Johnson" but "Boris", just as Ken Livingstone is "Ken" not "Livingstone".

Johnson doesn't need to get his face known as everyone recognises him already. His supporters tell me their priority is to lose his buffoonish image and reemerge in 2008 with hard policies.

Everything is wrong with these tactics. London isn't Henley on Thames, a commuter town made up of readers of the Telegraph and viewers of Have I Got News for You. It is a teeming metropolis, with millions of citizens who've never bought the Telegraph and rarely watch the BBC. To reach them, politicians have to repeat their slogans until they're hoarse. As Peter Mandelson used to say, it's only when you are sick of your own voice that you start to get through.

Worse for Tories, Johnson is making the mistake of underestimating Livingstone. The Mayor isn't a celeb, but a ruthless operator who has hired at public expense a Trotskyist sect called Socialist Action to act as his political commissars and has been campaigning non-stop for months.

Johnson's friends have always said that beneath the buffoonish exterior is a serious politician struggling to get out. I suspect he's got until Christmas to break through and prove it.