Jennifer Arcuri is the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Pile a Crock of Shit on Boris’s Head.

In case you’re not up to speed, the US businesswoman was friends with Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London. What sort of friend? She isn’t saying but we can fill in the gaps; mainly because she left those gaps on full view.

During their friendship, Johnson spoke four times at events to promote Arcuri’s tech business interests; her businesses were also paid £126,000 of public money; and she accompanied Johnson on three overseas trade missions, despite, as the Observer puts it “not qualifying as a delegate” (qualifying as a bit on the side doesn’t count).

All very cosy and generous, but now Johnson won’t speak to her and Arcuri is on her scorned woman tour. Her first revenge gig was an interview with ITV at the weekend.

The takeaway line from the interview was spoken directly to Boris Johnson: “I’ve kept your secrets and I’ve been your friend. And I don’t understand why you’ve blocked me and ignored me as if I was some fleeting one-night stand or some girl that you picked up as a bar because I wasn’t ­– and you know that.”

Arcuri also suggested, quite plausibly, that Johnson was concerned about conflict of interest. On becoming Mayor in 2008, he signed a code of conduct about such things; tricky when you live by a code of misconduct.

We don’t know how reliable Arcuri is as a witness; but we do know that Johnson is a famously unreliable witness.

Worth bearing in mind now that he is in wooing mood again, offering blandishments and bribes. He brings us flowers and promises us hospitals. Exact numbers are uncertain, but facts are so boring in the heat of a fling: 40 or four, what’s the difference, honey-bunch?

He promises us 20,000 new police officers – just the same number as his party scattered to the winds of austerity, but close that door, who’s counting?

The writers of newspaper headlines, those occasional compositors of lies, splurge out more unsweet swill. They clamour that Jeremy Corbyn will wreck the economy with a £1.2 trillion spending plan, a meaningless figure pulled from a pocket in Johnson’s crumpled suit jacket (watch you don’t whip out the condoms by mistake).

Arcuri has been swept aside, just another skeleton shoved back in the closet. And we should pay attention to her fate; we should remember her as Johnson swings through a forest of money trees. The cash is falling like leaves; suddenly he’s noticed the tattered struggles of the NHS (if only someone had told him).

Think of Jennifer Arcuri in these heated moments. If he wins, Johnson will treat us all like one-night stands. He’ll shut the door. He’ll refuse to take our calls. He’ll swear he never said those things; sweet nothings will just become nothings.

Tonight, Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have their first televised TV debate. Johnson has more to lose than Corbyn: he’s comfortably ahead in the polls and he swung an election while still in his honeymoon period (why did Corbyn agree to that instead of leaving Johnson to wriggle on that hook he’d made for himself?)

Corbyn has many disadvantages, not least having one foot in the past. The charge of antisemitism may be a put-up job on one level, but he has never managed to dampen that fire; much as he has never made up his mind about Brexit.

Still, Corbyn has one advantage. You know that he believes in what he says. Whereas Johnson is merely saying whatever needs to be said to be elected.

There’s no guarantee he’ll still love us in the morning. Just ask Jennifer.