Mount - The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson

Boo to grown ups!

Boriss earliest surviving article, written on a wall in the Johnson family farm at Nethercote, Somerset, c.1969.

As the oldest, Ive always known that my position was basically unchallengeable. It is the fixed point about which my cosmos is organised. I smile indulgently on everybody elses attempt to compete with me. Bring it on, I say.

Boris asserts his dominance to his sister, Julia.

Me and my brothers and sisters are like the honey you used to get produce of more than one country.

To Michael Cockerell, BBC, March 25, 2013.

An actress could be a euphemism, we may be about to turn up a prostitute here. Not that I mind. I want you to know they can get up to anything, my ancestors, they have carte blanche to commit whatever acts of fornication they want as far as Im concerned, but I want to know.

On revelations in the BBCs Who Do You Think You Are [2008] that he is descended from the illegitimate child of the actress Friederike Margrethe Porth (17761860).

My life was one of blameless, panda-like passivity until my sister arrived 18 months later.

To Michael Cockerell, BBC, March 25, 2013.

I tell you this. The Civilised World can ignore, must ignore entirely, these idiots who tell us that, by their very existence, the public schools demolish all hopes most cherished for the Comprehensive System. Clearly, this is twaddle, utter bunkum, balderdash, tommyrot, piffle and fiddlesticks of the most insidious kind. So strain every nerve, parents of Britain, to send your son to this educational establishment (forget the socialist gibberish about the destruction of the state system). Exercise your freedom of choice because, in this way, you will imbue your son with the most important thing, a sense of his own importance.

In defence of public schools, The Eton Chronicle, December 12, 1980.

I was a colossal swot of course, and I urge anyone listening to this programme to be a colossal swot. Its the only way forward.

On his success at Eton and Oxford.

I do remember Dave. Someone said to me once, Thats Cameron mi and there was this tiny chap, I dimly remember.

On David Cameron at Eton, to Michael Cockerell, BBC, March 25, 2013.

Im terribly, terribly sorry. Ive been so busy I just didnt have time to put in the mistakes.

On being accused by his Balliol tutor of lifting a Greek translation from a text book, c.1985.

The terrible art of the candidate is to coddle the self-deception of the stooge.

How to attract support while campaigning for the presidency of the Oxford Union, The Oxford Myth [ed. Rachel Johnson, 1988].

Like all harrowing and shattering defeats, it was very good for me.

On losing the election to become the Oxford Union President. He won the following year.

A truly shameful vignette of almost superhuman undergraduate arrogance, toffishness and twittishness. But at the time you felt it was wonderful to be going round, swanking it up. Or was it? Actually I remember the dinners being incredibly drunken. The abiding memory is of deep, deep self-loathing.

On the Bullingdon, to Michael Cockerell, BBC, March 25, 2013.

Buller, Buller, Buller.

Boriss traditional greeting on meeting a fellow member of the Bullingdon.

Some time in my late teens I found myself in a student house when someone put on Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones. I am fully aware of what sophisticated people are supposed to think about those first three siren-jangling chords. But the noise that came out of the battered old tape deck seemed to vibrate in my rib cage. Something in my endochrine system gave a squirt and pow, I could feel myself being transformed from this shy, spotty swotty nerd who had spent the past hour trying to maintain a conversation with the poor woman who was sitting next to me

It was pure Jekyll and Hyde. It was Clark Kent in the phone kiosk. I wont say that I leapt to my feet and beat my chest and took the girl by the hand. But I cant rule it out, because frankly I cant remember the details, except that it involved us all dancing on some chests of drawers and smashing some chairs.

It was Keith I practically aimed to emulate at the age of about 16 when I bought a pair of tight purple cords (a sheen of sweat appears on my brow as I write these words) and tried with fat and fumbling fingers to plink out Satisfaction on a borrowed guitar; and my abysmal failure to become a rock star only deepened my hero worship.

On Keith Richards, Johnsons Life of London [2011].

What a sharp-elbowed, thrusting and basically repellent lot we were. We were always bragging or shafting each other, and in a way we still are, with our pompous memoirs and calculated indiscretions.

On his Oxford contemporaries, Spectator, October 25, 2006.

My original ambition was to become a billionaire proprietor of a multiple retail empire and the Jimmy Goldsmith of my generation. Something went wrong.

Boriss contribution to Dominic Sheldermines My Original Ambition [2004].

World king.

Boriss ambition, according to his sister, Rachel.

To achieve more notches on my phallocratic phallus.

On his ambition, Eton leavers book, 1982.

IN THE WORDS OF OTHERS

Alexander Boris weighed 9 pounds 1 ounce at birth and is a remarkably lusty child.

Stanley Johnson reports the birth of his son to Boris Litwin, a friend and benefactor who Boris is named after.

Wilfully scruffy.

William Mostyn-Owen, father of Boriss first wife, Allegra, on his future son-in-law.

No Prussian militarist with a bankrupt estate in the barren depths of Brandenburg could be more single-minded than Boris in pursuit of knock-out victory.