According to a quick item on the BBC News 24 newspaper preview just now, tomorrow’s (well, today’s now) Telegraph has a lengthy profile of Boris which doesn’t sound like it’s the glowing praise-athon you might expect from his former employer.

It’s not online yet, but what I could glean from the television was that part of its headline was “Running for Mayor… and running from the Press?”, which is a nice gaffophobia reference, illustrated by a photo of a journalist (the author of the piece?) trying to grab him as he walks away.

Apparently the piece also focusses on some of his gaffes and some of the racist articles published in the Spectator when he was editor of it – which he issued another apology for this week, having previously only apologised for the things he’d written himself, rather than the out-and-out racism from the pen of Taki, which he waved through to the newsstand countless times during his editorship.

I don’t suppose even a StopBoris.org-worthy hatchet job would change some Telegraph readers’ minds about the columnist they lapped up for two decades until last year – and however surprisingly negative this article might be, it’s probably not that harsh – but you never know, it might just make some of their readers think twice about backing him.

We look forward to seeing the article when it appears online.

Update: It appeared while I was writing that! I’m a bit confused because although I think this must be the article they were referring to, I can’t see any references to the Spectator racism in it. Indeed, it’s one of the milder articles I’ve read - exactly as one would expect from his former employer.

It’s not without its revelations, though. Did you wonder what the underlying motivation for Boris to become Mayor was? What incident had propelled him to do all he could to get into City Hall? Was it his passion for the city’s diverse population? Perhaps his desire to dream up exciting policy plans to improve the city? Or some overarching vision for the greatest capital on Earth? Er, no. It all dates back to one brief encounter on his bike:

I was almost killed by a bendy bus and can remember pulling over, shaking, to the kerb and thinking, ‘Who did this? It must have been Livingstone, it must have been that man.’ And I remember thinking I would do anything I could to secure his removal from office.

Knowing that that was the real motivator explains rather a lot about his ridiculous campaign, actually.

This entry was posted on Saturday 5 April 2008 at 00.40 by Mr. Stop Boris and is filed under BBC, Buses, Cycling, Diversity, Ethnic minorities, Gaffophobia, Media, Telegraph, Transport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS2 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.