In a typically outstanding interview with New York Magazine, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, has come out saying that London is a great city because of a “greater range of girls at the bar,” that he’s doing it all for fame, and he wants to “assume supreme power in England” to build an airport in the thames. Radical.

The bumbling toff who quotes Milton quite naturally, is easily one of the coolest politicians in history. He was in New York to promote his new book Johnson’s Life of London: The People Who Made the City That Made the World, and spent an hour or so with a New York Magazine journalist.

He describes the book as  a “concealed manifesto . . . A hymn of praise for London.” But also a cautionary tale: “One of the points of it is that it can go backwards as well as forwards. In the middle of the twentieth century, London went backwards, and New York did too.”

The book is about why London is a great city, and he explains its argument in the best quote of the whole article:

The whole thesis of his book is about prestige. What makes people tick. We seek cities because there are a greater range of girls at the bar, of reproductive choice. Number one. Number two is there are better outcomes for health and wealth. And now we care more about the environment, and cities are better for the environment. But above all, talented people seek cities for fame. They can’t get famous in the fucking village.

In one quick take Boris knocks New York claims that London’s status as a great city rests on the notion that they have better women. But he’s not fininshed. Johnson goes on to quote Milton to explain just like those famous Londoners before him, he too is doing it for fame.

‘Fame is the spur which clear spirit doth raise / That last infirmity of noble mind / To scorn delights, and live laborious days.’ It’s from ‘Lycidas,’ the John Milton poem about a friend who drowned in the Irish Channel. “That’s what’s driving me. That’s the awful fact.”

You think that would be enough quotes for a journalist  – who must have been thanking the soundbite gods for Boris Johnson – but no, Boris saves his best for last. The article ends with Boris Johnson saying  “[w]e have to have a new airport. One of the only reasons I want to assume supreme power in England is to make sure that happens.” And where does Johnson want this new airport? In the freaking Thames Estuary, that’s where. What a legend.

Let us recap. In one interview the Mayor of London managed to quote Milton, claim his city has the best women, admit he’s doing it all for fame, reveals his ambition to be Prime Minister, and that he wants the job so he can build an airport in a river. Boris, sir, I salute you.

[Source: New York Magazine]