The new mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is a Conservative with an interesting history...
"Over the next few years, he developed the persona which has become famous today, a facade resembling that of PG Wodehouse's Gussie Finknottle, allied to wit, charm, brilliance and startling flashes of instability," Sir Max wrote recently in The Observer.
Opponents began to wonder what had happened to "old Boris" - when, they wondered, was he going to make some outrageous gaffe or turn in befuddlement to an aide, as he had done on a previous occasion, and ask: "What is my policy on drugs?" But he was having none of it. "There is no distinction between the old Boris and the new Boris. They are indivisible, co-eternal... consubstantial," he would reply testily when challenged about his new, serious persona.
He said that the media had a "pent up rage" after spending the campaign "deprived of their prey - a Johnson blooper".
He has stressed he is serious about running London and making "Greater London greater". But as he put it in a BBC interview after winning the election: "Of course there will be the odd indiscretion."
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