Floppy blond haired former mayor of London, New York-born Boris Johnson, is the new UK Foreign Minister. Watch this space! A brilliant tv print media journalist and author, bumbling Boris is known for his undiplomatic, colourful and hilarious oratory. He is the UK’s funniest politician, though not the universally most loved, especially after leading the Brexit campaign. But he is a New Zealand supporter and backs Kiwis doing their OE, working in London.
Here are 20 of his funniest quotes to media – and the public.
1) On being Prime Minister:
“My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.”
2) On school:
“I’d like thousands of schools as good as the one I went to, Eton.”
3)On employment:
“What I worry about is that people are losing confidence, losing energy, losing enthusiasm and there’s a real opportunity to get them into work.”
4) On cake:
“My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.”
5) On oratory skills:
“My speaking style was criticised by no less an authority than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a low moment, my friends, to have my rhetorical skills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg.”
6) On tennis:
“I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around.”
7) On midnight feasts:
“There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge.”
8) On his literary talents:
“Some people play the piano, some do Sudoku, some watch television, some people go out to dinner parties. I write books.”
9) On drugs:
“I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn’t go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar.”
10) On using a mobile phone whilst driving:
“I don’t believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving – nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on.”
11) On rich people:
“We should be helping all those who can to join the ranks of the super-rich, and we should stop any bashing or moaning or preaching or bitching and simply give thanks for the prodigious sums of money that they are contributing to the tax revenues of this country, and that enable us to look after our sick and our elderly and to build roads, railways and schools.”
12) On swimming in the City:
“If people want to swim in the Thames, if they want to take their lives into their own hands, then they should be able to do so with all the freedom and exhilaration of our woad-painted ancestors.”
13) On London jobs:
“London is a fantastic creator of jobs – but many of these jobs are going to people who don’t originate in this country.”
14) On the EU:
“First they make us pay in our taxes for Greek olive groves, many of which probably don’t exist. Then they say we can’t dip our bread in olive oil in restaurants. We didn’t join the Common Market – betraying the New Zealanders and their butter – in order to be told when, where and how we must eat the olive oil we have been forced to subsidise.”
15) On being a journalist:
“It is possible to have a pretty good life and career being a leech and a parasite in the media world, gadding about from TV studio to TV studio, writing inconsequential pieces and having a good time.”
16) On winning the London mayoral race:
“Never in my life did I think I would be congratulated by Mick Jagger for achieving anything.”
17) On terrorism:
“I think the risks that people see of terrorism are incredibly important but we are very confident we have got the right people on it and the risks have been minimised.”
18) On sex:
“I’ve slept with far fewer than 1,000”
19) On cannabis:
“It was jolly nice. But apparently it is very different these days. Much stronger. I’ve become very illiberal about it. I don’t want my kids to take drugs”.
20) On speed limits:
“No one obeys the speed limit except a motorised rickshaw.”
