A spokesperson for the Dutch police said officers investigated an incident when a car crashed in the northern city of Groningen. The car was abandoned but police were told that the driver was standing on the bridge.
On approaching the driver - who may well have been inebriated but most certainly didn't have messy blond hair - he handed over his driving license. While it was “not beyond the bounds of plausibility” that the former British prime minister might have broken the rules, said The Times, there were a “few giveaways” that the driving licence might be a forgery, including the expiry date - December 3000. And the photograph did not, in any way, resemble the driver.
The ID also featured the flag of Ukraine, where joke driving licences featuring famous figures are sold in tourist shops, according to the paper. Whether the arrested motorist was a Ukrainian national was unclear, but he was fined and the fake ID confiscated.
Groningen police said on their Instagram account: “Unfortunately for this person, we did not fall for his forgery.”
Police could not say where the forged document was made, but Kysia Hekster, a former Russia correspondent for the public broadcaster NOS, said in a tweet that fake driving licences could easily be bought in tourist shops in Ukraine, reports The Guardian.
The police spokesperson said: “As far as I’m aware, the real Mr Boris Johnson was not in the Netherlands at the time.”