Boris says awesome things...

One of the Mayor’s initiatives since coming to office has been to give all City Hall staff three days a year where they don’t have to turn up for work. Instead, they are asked to undertake some voluntary work.

The Mayor took one of his days this week and headed to St Saviour’s and St Olave’s Secondary School in Southwark to teach a bit of Latin. Bozza spent half an hour teaching kids about the modes of transport used in Rome and some basic Latin. In a topical moment, he also explained the Latin derivation of the word ‘coalition’ (it is from ‘coalesco’ which means ‘growing together’) to the class.

Boris also called for business leaders to implement this volunteers initiative, before the Mayor committed the ultimate in classroom blunders, when he addressed the teacher, Miss Hollender, by her first name…

As promised last week, the video for Bozza’s new single, Is Fatboy Slim A DJ? (in conjunction with 2 Anonymous DJs) is now available through the iTunes store. Just search for ‘Boris Johnson’ in the store, and you’ll find it.

Don’t forget that the video was made by those Oscar winning people at Aardman Animations and that all proceeds from the song and video are going to the Macmillan Cancer charity.

We’ve been watching the video here at Boriswatch HQ all morning. It really is quite entertaining watching a cartoon Boris explain how he once mastered the chords to Smoke on the Water, all with a pumping dance beat. It’s clearly bizarre, but also genius.

Head over to www.borisborisboris.com for more information about this worthy (and bonkers) project.

Named after the spiritual home of the Olympics and Paralympics – Much Wenlock and Stoke Mandeville – these two odd characters are Wenlock and Mandeville, the official mascots of the 2012 London Olympics.

The pair – each with a single giant eye – were chosen from a shortlist of hundreds by experts and schoolchildren. Apparently, the yellow lights on their heads are inspired by London’s black taxis, don’t you know.

Games chief Seb Coe said: “We’ve created our mascots for children. They didn’t want animals or humans, they wanted these.” And the Mayor added: “It’s hard to imagine mascots more in tune with the times.”

And, according to the Independent, when the characters were revealed, Bozza also exclaimed, “”Hah! The Cameron and Clegg of the Olympics!”  In the sense that they look identical, are faintly wierd and have a date with destiny in a few years, we suspect Bozza is absolutely right….

Now then.  We at Boriswatch HQ have encountered some things in our time (and that doesn’t include the time we ambled into the wrong nightclub on our fact-finding mission to Bangkok).  Perhaps the strangest thing we have ever come across was the sight of the Mayor of London engaging Peggy Mitchell in conversation at the bar of the Queen Vic in Walford – at least until we were handed the keys to this little beauty.

Boris is, and there’s no easy way of making this less unlikely than it is – set to top the charts on a rap record.

(I know, I know.  I did say that it was unlikely, and no, it isn’t April 1st).

The story is wonderfully told on the website of the brains behind this collaboration, 2 Anonymous DJs:

A few years ago, 2 Anonymous DJs and their friend Jim were sat in a pub. The DJs were looking for a new vocalist for a track they had just written. Jim jokingly suggested that they should contact Boris Johnson to see if he would like to be on their record. They joked about the potential for a while, then moved on to other matters.

A fortnight later, the DJs were in the office of their record label and noticed they had received an important looking letter. Unbeknownst to them, Jim had written to Boris to ask him if he would be interested in getting involved. Needless to say, his response was “Dear chaps, I’d be delighted!�. 2 Anonymous DJs were astounded, and confused. But they thought their friend had coaxed them into a position that was too much fun to refuse.

And so it was, a few months later the DJs arrived in a West London studio, sleep-deprived from the previous night’s gig in eastern Europe, to meet the man who was soon to become London Mayor. For an hour he spoke with Jim about his life and his work. The DJs whisked the recording back to their studio where they proceeded to work upon creating their fun masterpiece.

However, soon after this Jim was diagnosed with cancer and so the project was shelved while he underwent treatment for almost two years. Unfortunately this was not successful and he died in 2007 aged 33. One of the last things he did before getting ill was to organise Oscar® winning animation studio Aardman Animations (where he had been working) to create a video for the project. And they made something that perfectly reflects the fun nature of the song.

And so, several years later than planned, we’re proud to release this single as a tribute to Jim. You’ll see him in the video, and you’ll hear his voice at the end of the track. And we’d love it if you’d consider donating a few pounds to Macmillan Cancer Support by clicking here.

You can hear some clips from the brilliant record Is Fatboy Slim A DJ? here, including a nice Ping Pong Wiff Waff mix, and a Night-Mayor remix.

Boris Johnson vs 2 Anonymous DJs – Is Fatboy Slim a DJ? [AUDIO SAMPLES] by Boris Johnson vs 2AnonDJs

The video will be released on Monday 25th May (we’ll bring that to you as soon as we can) and you’ll be able to buy the song from 14th June.

For more information head over to the site at www.borisborisboris.com

*lies down*

It might all have been hugs and cuddles in the Downing Street garden as Nick Clegg and David Cameron launched their (surely doomed) coalition this week, but it didn’t take long for the new Government to start rubbing people up the wrong way.

Jeremy Hunt (no, it isn’t rhyming slang), the new Minister for Media, Olympics, Culture and Sport managed to annoy both Bozza and the former Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, by suggesting that the 2012 Olympic Games wasn’t immune from Government cuts.

Hunt suggested that £66 million might have to be saved, if the Government’s planned cuts were split equally across all departments.

As you might imagine, BoJo wasn’t best pleased with this.  A statement on the Mayor’s behalf said, “Significant savings have been found since Boris Johnson became mayor and all involved are continuing to seek further savings and ensure the best value for money possible for taxpayers. The mayor agrees that as a result of all this hard work to control cost, it should be possible to realise some savings now, but it would be a mistake to take too much money out of the Olympic budget, only to be forced to put more back in closer to the Games.

“The mayor is also completely committed to the commitments made to the regeneration legacy in east London and believes it would be a false economy to short-change the planned investment in this.”

Frantically backpedalling (a sport which we could excel in if the IOC introduced it by 2012), Olympic officials ‘were redoing their calculations and were confident that the Games would not be impacted’, reported the Daily Telegraph.

You may remember some time ago that we at Boriswatch reported this story, about the Mayor negotiating with the Daleks on behalf of the Earth.

Well, it appears that our intimation that Bozza is somehow aligned with the Doctor has been confirmed this week.

You may think it’s ridiculous that the present Mayor of London can be in some way a companion of the Doctor, a person who many of you will no doubt consider a fictional character.  However, we have evidence from the Mayor’s own Twitter account today that he is, indeed, a time-traveller.

“Super event this morning with Louis Vuitton at the Royal Academy. Perhaps I should have worn a better suit!” chirruped the Mayor this morning. Now then. Those of you with a little bit of historical knowledge, will know that Louis Vuitton, the founder of the famous, er, ‘handbag company’, died on February 27th, 1892. A full 118 years ago! So, all you non-believers, proof that Boris must be a Gallifreyan or have access to the Doctor’s little blue box.

[Or, of course, Boris could have been launching the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project, which 'seeks to instil and nurture an exploration, enjoyment and passion for the arts among young people which they can take into adult life and perhaps follow as a career'. The picture of Bozza at the launch doesn't look very Victorian to me...

Oh, and consider this your first verbal warning. We at Boriswatch HQ have had quite enough of this Doctor Who nonsense - Boriswatch Ed]

It’s been an exciting morning at Boriswatch HQ.  We switched on the TV today and, apparently, there is a Hung Parliament!  I know!  None of the parties got enough seats to form a government on their own, apparently…..

Ahem.

Anyway, despite it having precious little to do with him, Bozza held an interesting meat-based conversation with Jeremy Paxman on the BBC this week where he described the hung parliament situation in, er, sausage terms.

BoJo told Paxo, “Whatever type of Wall’s sausage is contrived by this great experiment, the dominant ingredient has got to be Conservatism. The meat in the sausage has to be Conservative.”

When asked whether it was a ‘chipolata’ or a ‘Cumberland sausage’, Boris looked uneasy. “Enough of the gastronomic metaphor,â€? he said.

We also particularly liked the well-known Tory supporter who used their Twitter account to have a pop at David Cameron by saying “It’s all gone tits up. Call for Boris”.  Mind you, we then realised that the message was posted by the Mayor’s sister, Rachel, so it’s perhaps not quite as independent and impartial a view as it could be….

Oh my. There’s another one.

We all know that Boris chose the path of Mayordom over Westminster politics, but after Thursday’s election we do have a Johnson as an MP. This is Bozza’s younger brother, Jo, who was elected as the Conservative MP for Orpington with a stonking 29,200 votes.

Johnson was chosen as the MP after the incumbent Tory, John Horam, announced he was stepping down in 2010. He beat the leader of local Bromley Council, Lib Dem David McBride with a 12.2% swing from the Liberal Democrats to the Conservatives.

The 39 year old journalist says, “My top priority will be to tackle the anti-social behaviour that is making so many people’s lives a misery. We should not have to put up with yobbish and inconsiderate behaviour and I applaud those who stand up against it.”

The younger Johnson has yet to provide us with a Boris-esque soundbite or be involved in a Johnson PR disaster. ‘Jowatch’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

It has long been an ambition of the Mayor to star in a British feature film, and Bozza got his chance recently as he took his finely honed acting skills to the set of the new comedy It’s A Wonderful Afterlife.

Directed by Gurinda Chadha who brought us Bend It Like Beckham, Boris stars alongside Heroes heartthrob Sendhil Ramamurthy in the horror comedy. This still is a scene from the new movie in which BoJo plays an East End gangster seeking revenge for the murder of his Indian bride on their wedding day.

Boris has received rave reviews for his performance as [Snip - Boriswatch Ed.  I think you will find that this is a publicity shot taken at Dalston Junction station to commemorate the opening of the new East London line this week....]

There’s a lovely interview with Boris this week in the Independent, as Rebecca Front, star of the BBC comedy The Thick Of It (and, as we find out, Bozza’s ‘political role model’) joins the Mayor as he campaigns on behalf of a local Conservative candidate.

It’s clear from the article that Boris is able to connect with a wide cross-section of the British public in a way that someone like Gordon Brown can only dream of.  From “a shifty-sounding conversation with a stall-holder about the best kind of tobacco for a shisha pipe” to introducing an Italian gentleman to a colleague because “he knows about parcheggio in Kensington”, Boris is clearly at ease in the company of both Front and the public.

And, as Front says, “Inside that Bertie Wooster exterior is a Jeeves-sized intellect….”