[imagesource: UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor]
One thing we do know, with absolute certainty, is that Boris Johnson intentionally keeps that mop on his head in an unruly state.
His dishevelled appearance and total lack of preparation before he opens his mouth is all part of his apparent appeal, which I fail to see.
BoJo’s financial situation is a little more unclear than his fondness for awful hairdos, and there has been much talk about the British Prime Minister struggling to pay his bills.
According to a number of reports, compiled by Business Insider, he’s been said to use Conservative Party funds to pay for:
- The refurbishment of his Downing Street residence
- A Caribbean holiday with his fiancee [now wife] Carrie Symonds
- His child’s nanny
- His own personal trainer
- £27,000 worth of takeaway meals
If Tory funds run low, maybe Boris can get a few words of advice from Health Minister Zweli Mkhize on how to properly facilitate the looting of public funds.
It’s believed that his financial woes stem from a drop in income since taking over from Theresa May, as well as child support payments to his “indeterminate number” of offspring.
Yes indeed – there is uncertainty over exactly how many children he has, with the number between five and seven.
There are also claims that his divorce from his second wife, Marina Wheeler, has hit him hard financially.
On the other side of the argument are those who say that Boris is not broke, he’s just really snoep.
The Dictionary of South African English defines snoep as “stingy, miserly, mean”, just so we’re on the same page.
Boris’ biographer, Sonia Purnell, says he’ll find any excuse he can to avoid opening his wallet:
“It’s a game he has always played… I mean what does he spend his money on? It’s certainly not on buying people rounds of drinks in the pub.
“He’s never done that. All the time I was in Brussels… you would go to the bar and he would drink other people’s drinks and never ever buy a drink. I mean never.
Purnell isn’t alone, with one of the prime minister’s associates saying everybody was warned to never lend him money, because you’d never get it back.
Some went as far as to call him “almost comically tight” with his cash:
When first dating his second wife he claims to have taken her to a meeting of the Hare Krishnas in order to avoid paying for lunch, which he told the Evening Standard in 2008 that she had “never forgiven me” for…
Insiders say Johnson’s notoriously scruffy appearance was also in part due to his reluctance to spend money on clothes.
Indeed his outfits while mayor, which often constituted a strange combination of a faded grey jacket and municipal beanie hats, were in part, according to one former colleague, lifted by Johnson from Transport for London’s lost property office.
One person recounts that whilst he was both the Mayor of London and a columnist for The Telegraph (pulling in a cool £275 000 a year from that gig alone), he asked a journalist to pay for his £3 sandwich as they waited in a queue together.
Interns at The Spectator, where he once worked, say that he never paid them back for coffee rounds.
It’s all laughable, until you consider that his financial woes (or his love for money) could make him a security risk, given what he knows and who would pay good money for that information.
[source:businsider]
