Local elections 2008

"My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters."
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"My chances of being prime minister are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."

"To rely on a train in Blair's Britain is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil."
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"What is my view on drugs? I've forgotten my view on drugs."
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"It is just flipping unbelievable. 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."
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"For 10 years we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing, and so it is with a happy amazement that we watch as the madness engulfs the Labour Party."
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"I'm supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest."
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"The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP they have run out of better ideas."

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is the great grandson of a Turkish journalist who was briefly a minister in the defunct Ottoman empire.

Born in New York in 1964 and educated at Eton College and Oxford University, where he studied Classics.

Married to his second wife, Marina Wheeler, a barrister, since 1993. They have four children. His hobbies include cycling, tennis and painting.

After lasting just one week as a management consultant, he began a career in journalism, working for the Daily Telegraph, Times and Spectator.

He became MP for Henley at the 2001 general election.

He was appointed Shadow Minister for the Arts in April 2004, followed by a stint as Shadow Minister for Higher Education.