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Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born June 19, 1964), better known as Boris Johnson, is a British Conservative politician and journalist. He is Member of Parliament for Henley and was briefly Shadow Minister for the Arts, and a Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party, until November 2004 when he was dismissed from his high-profile posts over accusations that he lied about having a four-year extramarital affair. He edits The Spectator and writes a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph newspaper.He was born in New York to Stanley Patrick Johnson and Charlotte Johnson. He is the great grandson of the last interior minister of the Imperial Turkish government. He 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 UnionThe Oxford Union Society commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union is a private debating society whose membership is drawn primarily from the University of Oxford. The Oxford Union was founded in 1823 using the Cambridge Union as a model. It has gai.
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 WheelerThe name Charles Wheeler can refer to: Charles Wheeler (painter) Charles Wheeler (cinematographer).), who is the mother of his two sons and two daughters.
Johnson is famously disorganised and 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".
1 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 TimesThe Times is a national daily newspaper in the United Kingdom. The Times is published by News International, a subsidiary of the News Corporation group, owned by Rupert Murdoch. For much of its history, the newspaper was regarded as without rival, the 'ne in 1987, but within a year 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 CommunityThe European Community EC , most important of three European Communities was originally founded on March 25, 1957 by the signing of the Treaty of Rome under the name of European Economic Community . The 'Economic' was removed from its name by the Maastric 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 become editor of The Spectator but continues to write a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph.
Johnson has appeared on the British television programme Have I Got News For YouHave I Got News For You is a UK television panel game, on the subject of news, politics and current affairs. Produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC, it is a comedy programme rather than a serious game show: the banter between the guests and the sar three times, and twice as guest presenterA television presenter is a British term for a celebrity who is best known for introducing or appearing in television programmes. They will often be known for this alone and have no particular expertise. A television presenter may double as an actor, sing, and has also appeared on the similar Radio 4Radio stations 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station which broadcasts a wide variety of chiefly spoken-word programmes including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It is broadcast on 92 95 MHz FM and 198 kHz longwave; and via DAB, satel 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 Seventy-Two Virgins was published in 2004, and he is currently working on a book about what it means to be British, due for publication in 2005. He was nominated in 2004 for a BAFTA television award, and has attracted several unofficial fan clubs and sites.
His official Boris Johnson web site and blog started up in September 2004.
