Boris Johnson’s most sensible quotes

As London’s colourful Mayor weighs in on the Scottish Independence debate, with a typically verbose and incisive column, we thought it’d be a fitting time to round up some of his most sensational, but sublimely strategic, outbursts.

On Scottish independence:

“This is about all of us. I am praying that we will wake from this sleepwalk to tragedy; and that the Scots vote no to divorce, and yes to Britain, the greatest political union ever.”

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.”

On wanting to be Prime Minister:

“Obviously, if the ball came loose from the back of a scrum – which it won’t – it would be a great, great thing to have a crack at. But it’s not going to happen.”

On cake:

“My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.”

On voting:

“Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3.”

On sex:

“I’ve slept with far fewer than 1,000.”

On UKIP:

“I can hardly condemn UKIP as a bunch of boss-eyed, foam-flecked Euro hysterics, when I have been sometimes not far short of boss-eyed, foam-flecked hysteria myself.”

On George W. Bush:

“The President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy.”

On Volleyball:

“As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is splashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers.”

On blurting things out:

“If we judged everybody by the stupid unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn’t ever get anywhere.”

On the London Olympics:

“The excitement is growing so much I think the Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink off the scale.”

On the possibility of a coalition:

“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 got to be Conservative, I would say. With plenty of bread and other bits and pieces.”

On being sacked from the Tory front bench:

“Nothing excites compassion, in friend and foe alike, as much as the sight of you ker-splonked on the Tarmac with your propeller buried six feet under.”

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