Clooney argued they should be returned and Johnson, then mayor of London, replied in characteristically vaudeville form.
George Clooney will not be sending Boris Johnson a Christmas card, but he may send a thank-you note to No 10 – along with a comb, he told the Observer this weekend.
“This Clooney is advocating nothing less than the Hitlerian agenda for London’s cultural treasures,” Johnson concluded.
Johnson, he tells the Observer, “literally compared me to Hitler”.