The wit and, er, wisdom of Boris Johnson, the joker who's never lost for words
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| Boris Johnson memorably flattened a schoolboy during a game of rugby in 2015 |
'My chances of being Prime Minister are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars or being reincarnated as an olive.'
'I can't remember what my line on drugs is. What's my line on drugs?' Campaigning for the 2005 General Election.
'She's got dyed blonde hair and pouty lips, and a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.' About Hillary Clinton.
'As Henry VIII discovered, with at least two of his wives, this is the perfect place to bring an old flame.' On the arrival of the Olympic torch at the Tower of London.
'This is possibly the most deluded measure to come from Europe since Diocletian tried to fix the price of groceries across the Roman Empire.' On plans to cap bankers' bonuses in 2013. [Roman Emperor Diocletian tried to calm a chaotic empire in AD 301 by imposing maximum prices on common goods, attempting to stop inflation.]
'My ambition silicon chip has been programmed to try to scramble up this cursus honorum, this ladder of things.' Desert Island Discs, October 30, 2005. [Cursus honorum is Latin for the list of top public offices in ancient Rome.]
'Mayoral culpa, mayoral maxima culpa.' On calling a St Patrick's Day gala dinner in 2012 'Lefty crap'. [Mea culpa is Latin for my fault. Mea maxima culpa is Latin for my fault on a really big scale.]
'I imagine it is like being asked to make love to a woman who has just achieved bliss in the arms of Errol Flynn, or Robin Cook, or someone.' On following Ann Widdecombe, now a Brexit Party MEP, as a speaker at a Conservative event.
Boris had a four-year affair with journalist Petronella Wyatt, which was exposed in 2004, but he called the claims 'an inverted pyramid of piffle'
'I stood behind Posh in a ski queue and saw the tattoos on her bum. I like her.' On Victoria Beckham.
'More hot air than the wind section of the London Philharmonic.' Boris's first press release as shadow arts minister on Labour's plans for music in schools.
'Like Shane Warne doing his flipper.' Describing a Roman statue of the Emperor Augustus. A flipper is a type of back-spin bowl in cricket.
'There are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is splashing off the brims of the spectators' sou'westers. The whole thing is magnificent and bonkers.' At the Olympics, 2012.
'My instincts are not to go around, trying to exterminate Mickey Mouse courses. One man's Mickey Mouse course is another man's literae humaniores.' In his first interview as Tory higher education spokesman, 2006. [Literae humaniores is the name for the classics course he did at Oxford.]
'I think I was given cocaine once but I sneezed so it didn't go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar.'
'One of the most depressed towns in southern England, a place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs.' On Portsmouth.
'My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.' On being sacked from the Tory front bench, 2004.
Boris shows off his dad dancing as TV star Ulrika Jonsson ties to teach him some better moves
'Look, I'm rather pro-European, actually. I certainly want a European community where one can go off and scoff croissants, drink delicious coffee, learn foreign languages and generally make love to foreign women.' Boris on the EU, during his failed first bid for Parliament.
'I was never one of those acnoid Tory boys who had semi-erotic dreams about Margaret Thatcher. She never visited me at night in her imperial-blue dress and bling and magnificent pineapple-coloured hair.'
'Your car will go faster, your girlfriend will have a bigger bra size.' On voting Tory.
'There's been something bizarre about the lip-smacking savagery of the new Liberal Democrats, with Vince Cable morphing into a mad axeman, a transformation as incongruous as the killer rabbit in Monty Python.' Conservative Conference, 2009.
'He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall.' On Tony Blair.
'I think it's a very tough job being Prime Minister. Obviously, if the ball came loose from the back of a scrum — which it won't — it would be a great, great thing to have a crack at. But it's not going to happen.'
'My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.'
'He is like some sherry-crazed old dowager who has lost the family silver at roulette, and who now decides to double up by betting the house as well. He is like a drunk who has woken to the most appalling hangover, and who reaches for the whisky bottle to help him dull the pain.' On Gordon Brown.
'A bunch of Trotskyist, car-hating, Hugo Chavez-idolising, newt-fancying hypocrites and bendy-bus fetishists.' On Ken Livingstone and his colleagues in London's City Hall.
'There was a young fellow from Ankara/Who was a terrific w***erer/Till he sowed his wild oats/With the help of a goat/But he didn't even stop to thankera.' Boris's prize-winning entry in The Spectator competition to write a rude limerick about Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Boris referred to The Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger was 'an Austrian monosyllabic cyborg'
'Get me a ladder.' On being trapped on a zipwire during the Olympics.
'It got very tight around the groin area.'
'Folks, let's be clear: Mo Farah is as British as a beefeater in the Tower of London. He is as British as a pint of bitter, as British as a bulldog, as British as a wet Bank Holiday Monday or a bad pun in a Carry On film or a hot Cornish pasty on a cold platform at Reading station.'
'I've got my fingers in several dykes.' Conservative Conference, 2004.
'I think it'd be disgraceful if a chap wasn't allowed to have a bit of fun in Las Vegas. The real scandal would be if you went all the way to Las Vegas and you didn't misbehave in some trivial way.' Boris supports Prince Harry.
'The M3 opened up before me, a long quiet Bonneville flat stretch, and I am afraid it was as though the whole county of Hampshire was lying back and opening her well-bred legs, to be ravished by the Italian stallion.' Driving a Ferrari.
'In 1904, 20 per cent of journeys were made by bicycle in London. I want to see a figure like that again. If you can't turn the clock back to 1904, what's the point of being a Conservative?' Said during the Boris bikes launch in London.
'I don't see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. It has some respectable documentaries about World War II. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap dancing, and other related and vital subjects.'
'It's chicken feed. I think that frankly there is no reason at all why I should not, on a Sunday morning, before I do whatever else I need to do on a Sunday morning, should not knock off an article.' Boris on his £250,000 salary for his Telegraph columns.
'World king.' What he said, aged five, to his sister Rachel on being asked what he wanted to be when he grew up.
'Take the case of Pericles. The Athenian leader was a bit of a slaphead with a dolichocephalic skull.' On Michael Howard being Tory leader. [Dolichocephalic, from the ancient Greek: means having a long skull.]
'If Augustus had any kind of logistical or military problem, his first reaction, I imagine, was to shout, 'Get Agrippa'.' On the Roman Emperor Augustus's right hand man, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.
- Harry Mount is editor of The Wit And Wisdom Of Boris Johnson (Bloomsbury).
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7279013/The-wit-er-wisdom-Boris-Johnson-joker-whos-never-lost-words.html
