Boris’s ‘4 year af fair’ with model
In bombshell TV interview, PM’s pole-dancing friend says she warned him to come clean about their relationship – and now he’s dropped her ‘like one of Kennedy’s girlfriends’.
BORIS Johnson’s love affair with a poledancing US model who was handed thousands of pounds in public money lasted for four years, an explosive TV documentary claims tonight.
In it, Jennifer Arcuri says he told her he knew their relationship was a conflict of interest but was ‘worried’ about declaring it because he was married at the time.
She scolds Mr Johnson for refusing to speak to her after the scandal broke over their affair, claiming she has been ‘brushed off as if I was one of Kennedy’s girlfriends.’
It is also claimed she boasted of having him ‘wrapped around my little finger’.
In an extraordinary attack aimed at Mr Johnson, she says: ‘I don’t understand why you’ve blocked me and ignored me as if I was some fleeting one-night stand or some girl that you picked up at a bar because I wasn’t – and you know that. I’m terribly heartbroken by the way that you have cast me aside like I am some gremlin.’
Ms Arcuri refused to go as far as saying she had an affair with Mr Johnson, telling ITV Exposure: ‘It’s no one’s business if we were in a relationship or not.’
But award-winning veteran journalist John Ware will tell viewers: ‘After many hours of conversation with Ms Arcuri – and confirmation by several sources including those she confided in at the time – I’m left in no doubt they had an affair lasting at least four years.’
Previous reports suggested that their relationship was little more than a fling.
In an interview that heaps renewed pressure on the British PM in the middle of a general election campaign, Ms Arcuri says:
● Her business benefited after she was invited to accompany Mr Johnson on a 2015 trade trip to Israel;
● She wishes Mr Johnson had declared their relationship as a potential conflict of interest to avoid the ‘humiliation’ she has now suffered;
● She feels ‘disgusted and humiliated’ by Johnson refusing to speak to her and reveals how on one bizarre occasion he handed his mobile phone to an aide who garbled down the line in Chinese.
Mr Johnson is facing two separate inquiries over his relationship with Ms Arcuri while he was Mayor of London. Investigations have been launched by City Hall and the police watchdog over Mr Johson’s links with the tech entrepreneur who was handed £126,000 of public grants and went on overseas trade missions with Mr Johnson to Indonesia and Israel.
Last night, a Conservative Party spokesman said: ‘Any claims of impropriety in office are untrue and unfounded.’
Ms Arcuri, 34, who lives in Los Angeles, returned to London last week for the first time since the storm broke over her alleged affair with Mr Johnson, 55.
In the interview, Ms Arcuri claims Mr Johnson repeatedly refused to take her calls after the scandal broke and that she was ‘the collateral damage that’s left behind.’
She said: ‘He puts his head in the sand and looks the other way. I’m the one on the ground having to pick up the pieces from my name and my integrity and my character and my business.’
She was a 27-year-old student in London when, within weeks of arriving in the UK, she met the 47year-old married mayor at an event in a London hotel. Ms Arcuri said she thought Mr Johnson was ‘electrifying’ and had ‘a certain magnetic energy around him that was very appealing’.
Mr Ware alleges that before the end of 2012, Mr Johnson and Ms Arcuri had begun a sexual relationship that went on to last four years. In one frosty exchange, Mr Ware says: ‘When we met a month ago, I think you did concede to me, if I recall rightly, that he was obsessed with you. I think that was a term you used.’
Ms Arcuri: ‘I don’t remember that.’
‘I do,’ says Ware, to which Arcuri replies: ‘I don’t wanna talk about that.’ Mr Ware asks: ‘Do you think he was in love with you?’
Ms Arcuri replies: ‘If he was in love with me then he should’ve come and get me.’ Mr Ware asks: ‘Where? When?’ Ms Arcuri replies: ‘In another life. This one didn’t work out.’
It is the closest she has come so far to admitting that she and Mr Johnson were lovers.
Ms Arcuri describes hiding from prying eyes when she went for dinner with Mr Johnson. She said that by 2013, it was becoming increasingly difficult to be out in public, so from then on, they met at her flat in East London.
Mr Johnson spoke at four events hosted by Ms Arcuri’s burgeoning technology events company Innotech – raising eyebrows among the industry that a hitherto unknown, young, attractive businesswoman had landed the Mayor of London as a keynote speaker.
She says that Johnson was ‘worried’ about questions about their relationship. She said: ‘That was my fight with Boris. What my fight was always, [I would say] “Validate me, tell them, validate me”... [Johnson said] “No, no, now I have to declare an interest.”’
She added: ‘He used to always get worried. [Johnson said] “People are gonna question about my interest.” And I said, “No, they won’t because I’m legitimate, I’m, I applied to be here. I’m not here because of you. I’m here because on my own right.”’
The businesswoman claims she tried to warn the British PM that reporters had been contacting her and friends before the scandal over their relationship broke in September, but was met with silence.
She she said when she called Mr Johnson’s personal phone after the story broke, she was passed to someone else who spoke to her in Chinese. Mr Ware asked her: ‘Whoever started talking in Chinese to you, into the personal telephone number of the Prime Minister, was in effect saying: “get lost?”’
Speaking about her most recent call, she said: ‘He heard my voice. And I knew it was him. And he hung up. He said: “yes hello”, and I simply asked: “Why did you block me?”’
One of Ms Arcuri’s colleagues tells the programme she boasted of having Mr Johnson ‘wrapped around my little finger’ after he attended one of her conferences. Asked if she remembered the comment, Ms Arcuri said: ‘[It] sounds like something I would say.’
Ms Arcuri also said her cyber security business Hacker House benefited from being attached to a mayoral trade mission to Tel Aviv in November 2015. She said: ‘What I have built now has been from what I went and learned and took back from my journey to Tel Aviv.’
Professor Alan Doig, a former member of the public standards board for England, told ITV Mr Johnson could have breached the Greater London Authority code by not declaring a private relationship with Ms Arcuri.
Prof Doig said: ‘This would have been something that should have been declared just in terms of common sense and caution.’
Labour shadow communities minister Andrew Gwynne said: ‘Serious questions have again been raised about Boris Johnson’s honesty and integrity.’
Johnson’s ‘magnetic energy was appealing’
● When Boris Met Jennifer will air on UTV at 11pm tonight.