Boris Johnson

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Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born 19 June 1964 in New York City, USA), better known as Boris Johnson (and occasionally as 'Bo-Jo' within the UK tabloid press) is a British Conservative politician, journalist and historian, with a distinctive scatty and eccentric public persona. He is Member of Parliament for Henley and also Shadow Minister for Higher Education.

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Early life

He was one of the four children born to Stanley Johnson and his first wife, Charlotte Johnson-Wahl. He is the great-grandson of the last interior minister of the Imperial Turkish government, Ali Kemal. Kemal signed the arrest warrant for Kemal Ataturk, now regarded as the founder of modern Turkey. Kemal was assassinated by backers of Ataturk; he was at a barber's shop in Izmit when he was attacked by a mob, beaten to death, and stuck to a tree. After this event, Boris' grandfather sought asylum in England. Boris was educated at Eton College, where he was a King's Scholar, and read Greats at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Brackenbury Scholar, and President of the Oxford Union. While at Oxford he was also a member of the Bullingdon Club, a socially exclusive student dining society.

At 19, he was married briefly to Allegra Mostyn-Owen.

In 1993, he married Marina Wheeler, a barrister (and the daughter of journalist and broadcaster Charles Wheeler), who is the mother of his two sons and two daughters.

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Journalism

After leaving university he lasted a week as a management consultant ("Try as I might, I could not look at an overhead projection of a growth profit matrix, and stay conscious"), before becoming a trainee reporter for The Times, but within a year he had been sacked for falsifying a quotation from his godfather, Colin Lucas, later Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Following a short period as a writer for the Wolverhampton Express and Star, he joined The Daily Telegraph in 1987 as leader and feature writer, and from 1989 to 1994 was the paper's European Community correspondent. He served as assistant editor from 1994–1999. His association with The Spectator began with a stint as political columnist from 1994 to 1995. In 1999 he became editor of The Spectator but resigned in December 2005 after being appointed Shadow Minister for Higher Education.

Johnson has appeared on the British television programme Have I Got News for You three times each as a panellist and guest presenter, and has also taken part in the similar Radio 4 programme, The News Quiz. He has written an autobiographical account of his experience of the 2001 election campaign entitled Friends, Voters, Countrymen: Jottings on the Stump. He is also the author of two collections of journalism, Johnson's Column and Lend Me Your Ears. His first novel was Seventy-Two Virgins, published in 2004, and his latest book is The New British Revolution (2006). He was nominated in 2004 for a British Academy Television Award, and has attracted several unofficial fan clubs and sites. His official Boris Johnson web site and blog started up in September 2004.

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Politics

In 2001, Johnson became MP for Henley-on-Thames, succeeding Michael Heseltine. He had previously failed to win Clwyd South in 1997. In 2004 he was appointed to the front bench as Shadow Minister for the Arts. This was part of a small reshuffle resulting from the resignation of the shadow home affairs spokesman, Nick Hawkins. He was also a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, with emphasis on campaigning.

Johnson was dismissed from these high-profile posts in November 2004 over accusations that he lied about having a four-year extramarital affair with Petronella Wyatt, The Spectator's New York correspondent and former deputy editor. Johnson derided these allegations as "an inverted pyramid of piffle", but Michael Howard stated that he sacked Johnson because he believed press reports showed that Johnson had lied in this denial of the affair, rather than for the affair itself.

He was appointed Shadow Minister for Higher Education on 9 December 2005 by new Conservative leader, David Cameron, and resigned as editor of The Spectator as a result. On April 2, 2006 it was alleged in the News of the World that Johnson has had a second extra-marital affair, with Times Higher Education Supplement journalist Anna Fazackerley. The video ([1]) shows him emerging from her flat and waving to her in a taxi. A report in The Times [2] stated that David Cameron regarded the possible affair as a private matter, and he would not lose his job.

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History

Johnson is also a historian and his first documentary series, The Dream of Rome, was broadcast in 2006. It compared the Roman Empire and the modern-day European Union. The first of two parts was aired on BBC Two on 29th January, and the second on 5th February. Radio Times described Johnson as a "brilliant, funny presenter" despite an "unashamedly self-serving" argument [3]. He also wrote a book to accompany the programmes. One of his advisors was Benet Salway.

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Bigley editorial

On 16 October 2004, The Spectator carried an editorial comment criticising a perceived trend to mawkish sentimentality by the public. Using British hostage Kenneth Bigley as an example, the editorial claimed the inhabitants of Bigley's home city of Liverpool were wallowing in a "vicarious victimhood"; that many Liverpudlians had a "deeply unattractive psyche"; and that they refused to accept responsibility for "drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground" during the Hillsborough disaster, a contention at odds with the findings of The Taylor Report into the causes of the tragedy. The reaction to Bigley's murder in Liverpool was, in terms of active public interaction, low key; consisting of no more than two minutes' silence organised by the city council and a sparsely attended service at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, although overblown coverage and hyperbole was rampant in the media at the time. The editorial closed with: "In our maturity as a civilisation, we should accept that we can cut out the cancer of ignorant sentimentality without diminishing, as in this case, our utter disgust at a foul and barbaric act of murder."

Although Johnson had not written the leader (journalist Simon Heffer later said he "had a hand" in it), he accepted responsibility for it. Conservative leader Michael Howard condemned the editorial, saying "I think what was said in The Spectator was nonsense from beginning to end", and sent Johnson on a tour of contrition to the city. There, in numerous interviews and public appearances, Johnson defended the editorial's thesis (that the deaths of figures such as Bigley and Diana, Princess of Wales were over-sentimentalised); but he apologised for the article's wording (saying "I think the article was too trenchantly expressed but we were trying to make a point about sentimentality") and for using Liverpool and Ken Bigley's death as examples. Johnson appeared on a BBC Radio Merseyside phone-in show, in which Paul Bigley (brother of the murdered hostage) told Johnson: "You are a self-centred pompous twit — get out of public life". Michael Howard resisted calls to dismiss Johnson over the Bigley affair, but dismissed him the next month over the Wyatt revelations.

Against all odds, the contrition tour has left its mark on the city of Liverpool, albeit one whose longevity has yet to be determined. City tour guides are reported to include the pointing out of locations where Johnson made his apologies, alongside the more traditional objects of interest such as the "Liver Bird" statues and, inevitably, anything to do with The Beatles.

On 9 December 2005, Johnson returned to the opposition front bench as spokesman on higher education. Simultaneously, he announced he was quitting as editor of The Spectator.

"This is a fantastic job and I am thrilled to be given the chance to do it," he said. "It is also a very hard job to do properly. It will mean a lot of time and thought. That is why I will be leaving The Spectator shortly after the Christmas edition has gone to press."

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Public persona and Have I Got News for You

Image:Boris Johnson arrives at the ICA by bicycle.jpg Johnson cultivates an image as an eccentric, straw-haired fop, disorganised and scatty (he once explained the lateness of his work by claiming that "Dark forces dragged me away from the keyboard, swirling forces of irresistible intensity and power"). He has also got his own name wrong on Have I Got News for You, and successfully got locked out of his own home in front of reporters (having just told them his family would definitely forgive his affair). His mobile telephone has rung twice while he was on BBC programmes — once on Have I Got News for You, and again while being interviewed on BBC Radio 2 by Richard Allinson, who was unafraid to scold him for it.

He has presented Have I Got News for You three times, also having appeared as a guest three times previously to such an effect that the tabloid press, prior to his becoming an MP, tagged him as the show's "star", even though at that stage he'd only appeared twice, on a programme that had been running for a decade.

His first appearance, in 1998, reached a peak when Ian Hislop humiliated Boris over his previous association with fraudster and school friend Darius Guppy, quoting verbatim from a taped telephone conversation between the two which mentioned the idea of attacking a journalist who was digging into Guppy's affairs. A livid Boris later claimed the show was "fixed", though retracted the comment when he was invited back as a guest for a second time. On this occasion he was embarrassed rather less indelicately when a photograph of him as an Eton teenager was shown.

The third time he appeared — by now he was in Parliament — he was subjected to a surprise Mastermind parody round — spotlight and all — on which he was forced to answer questions about his leader, Iain Duncan Smith. Despite claiming to be an admirer and supporter of his leader, Boris proceeded to get no questions right at all. It was also during this episode that he got his name wrong (he said, "My name is Boris Johnson" when asked. However, host Angus Deayton proceeded to quote his full birth name instead) and his mobile telephone went off. He also memorably admitted that he had forgotten the title of his own book as he was writing it, hence an inconsistency between the title on the hard cover (Jottings from the Stump) and the dust jacket (Jottings on the Stump).

After Deayton's sacking, Boris was one of a number of people recruited to host the show on a guest basis, and during his first attempt at keeping order and mastering the autocue, he promised Paul Merton a coconut instead of a point. Realising the silliness of this statement, he retracted it but Paul insisted on having a coconut. At the end of the show, a stage hand rushed in with a bag of them, giving Boris a chance to say, "Coconuts from the party that keeps its promises!" He also said that the chances of him becoming leader of the Conservative Party were about as likely as being locked in a disused fridge. Paul Merton cheerily told him that these things do happen.

He returned to front Have I Got News for You in November 2005. He admitted on the show that he once tried to snort cocaine but sneezed and failed. He reiterated his support for David Cameron, while being mocked by Hislop and Merton.

The appearances of Boris on the popular news quiz remain some of the most memorable in the show's long history and they, together with his accompanying self-deprecation, have earned him a large fanbase, even from people with no intention of voting Conservative.

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Edinburgh University Rector elections

Boris was nominated by more than 200 students of the University of Edinburgh to stand as a nominee for the Rectorial Elections in 2006, but came third.

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Bibliography

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Videos & DVDs

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External links

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References

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