Before entering politics, Boris Johnson made his name first as a reporter and then a columnist rising to fame with the Daily Telegraph and then the Spectator. But it was not always a smooth ascent: he was sacked from the Times as a graduate trainee for making up a quote and as a Brussels correspondent generating dozens of controversial stories that poked fun at the EU institutions and refashioned Euroscepticism in the UK years before the Brexit vote.
But one particular incident stands out: so-called ‘Guppygate’. In 1990, Johnson was secretly recorded agreeing to provide the address of the News of the World reporter Stuart Collier to his friend Darius Guppy, who wanted to arrange for the journalist to have his ribs cracked as revenge for investigating his activities. Collier has told the Guardian he wants a full apology from Johnson.
Attempting to separate fact from fiction in Johnson’s journalistic career has not been easy: his biographers Andrew Gimson and Sonia Purnell both worked with him and between them have spoken to hundreds of his former colleagues. They describe to Anushka Asthana the rise of a highly ambitious man who once wrote two opposing columns before the EU referendum campaign before choosing to back leave.
Also today: Sabrina Siddiqui on Donald Trump’s weekend tweets, which have been widely condemned as racist.
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