London Mayor Still Pissed Over Losing Harry Potter Theme Park

The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, hasn't forgiven Warner Bros. for building its "Wizarding World of Harry Potter" theme park in Orlando, taking to his weekly newspaper column to urge reform in all matters of unholy pagan leisure time. Opening June 18 in Florida, the 20-acre facility is the world's first dedicated to the boy-wizard institution -- and, if Johnson and his angry British constituency have anything to say about it, certainly not the last.

Nothing personal, Orlando -- you're lovely. But according to Johnson, you're missing that certain gloomy, bitter, entitled special something that really deserves a full-size Quidditch ride:

I cannot conceal my feelings; and the more I think of those millions of beaming kids waving their wands and scampering the Styrofoam turrets of Hogwarts, and the more I think of those millions of poor put-upon parents who must now pay to fly to Orlando and pay to buy wizard hats and wizard cloaks and wizard burgers washed down with wizard mead, the more I grind my teeth in jealous irritation.

Because the fact is that Harry Potter is not American. He is British. Where is Diagon Alley, where they buy wands and stuff? It is in London, and if you want to get into the Ministry of Magic you disappear down a London telephone box. The train for Hogwarts goes from King's Cross, not Grand Central Station [sic], and what is Harry Potter all about? It is about the ritual and intrigue and dorm-feast excitement of a British boarding school of a kind that you just don't find in America. Hogwarts is a place where children occasionally get cross with each other - not "mad" - and where the situation is usually saved by a good old British sense of HUMOUR. WITH A U. RIGHT? NOT HUMOR. GOTTIT?

I know [...] everyone at Warner Bros and Universal will do a magnificent job of making it look and feel authentic and faithful to the stories. But I know somewhere that's even better than Orlando at looking like London - and that is London. I want to know why this Kingdom of Potter is not being built in the UK, and I won't be fobbed off with any nonsense about the weather. They built Eurodisney in the Valley of the Marne, where it is at least as cold and drizzly as it is in London - and it has been a triumphant success.

GOTTIT? Johnson won't be fobbed off! Whatever; Potterland is the least Warners should take from these creeps for never returning Stanley Kubrick after 30 years. Talk to us in 2040, punks. WITH A U.

· Now here's a wizard idea. Why not bring Harry Potter home? [Telegraph]