Boris blonde refuses 9 times to deny she slept with the PM
But in first interview, she reveals that they bonded over Shakespeare ... and she urged him to try out dance pole inside her flat
AN AMERICAN businesswoman yesterday refused nine times to deny an affair with Boris Johnson as she told how they bonded over a mutual love of Voltaire and Shakespeare.
Jennifer Arcuri, 34, revealed in her first interview that the ‘electrifying’ former London mayor, 55, came to her flat on his way home to his wife.
They discussed ‘ technology’ and ‘classic literature’ in her three-bedroom apartment in Shoreditch, East London, where she urged him to try out her nightclub dancing pole.
Asked if they were ever ‘intimate’, the former model retorted: ‘Would you like me to ask about your sex life?’ She added that it was ‘really categorically no one’s business ’.
Miss Arcuri a tech entrepreneur, rubbished claims the Prime Minister had helped her business as being ‘fake news’.
Her firms received £126,000 of taxpayers’ money, and the PM is being investigated over a possible conflict of interest. Mr Johnson has until tonight to give details of their relationship to the London Assembly. Refusal could see him summonsed to give evidence. Yesterday he again swerved questions about whether Miss Arcuri had been his mistress, saying: ‘I’ve really said all I want to say about that’, adding that he had not broken any rules.
In an extraordinary hour-long live interview on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Miss Arcuri told presenters Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid: ‘Boris never, ever gave me favouritism.’
Pressed on whether their fiveyear friendship had been intimate, she declined to answer nine times, saying: ‘Because the press have made me this objectified ex-model pole dancer, I’m really not going to answer that question. I’m not going to be putting myself in a position for you to weaponise my answer.’
When Mr Morgan said this was not a denial, she nodded, adding: ‘I’m not answering.’
Speaking from Los Angeles, where she now lives, Miss Arcuri told how the pair bonded after meeting at a City summit when she moved to London in 2011.
She said Mr Johnson was ‘this guy that walks in the room with his hair all dishevelled, his shirt untucked... he proceeds to speak, suddenly he turns the entire room of grovelling, curmudgeonly, angry men into howling schoolgirls – it was just electrifying’.
In 2012, Miss Arcuri joined him on his battle bus as he campaigned for a second term as mayor. She recalled: ‘On the bus, he had a book of short stories. I think it was Voltaire, I remember striking up a conversation about classic literature and Shakespeare, we immediately bonded over this kind of mutual love of classic literature, and particularly Shakespeare.’
Mr Johnson asked for her phone number. ‘The first message – I was out with my friends – came in saying “Boris calling Jennifer”,’ she said. On the advice of her friends she stored his number under a code name. ‘I put him in as Alex the Great and that’s how he stayed.’
Mr Johnson visited her office-cum-apartment ‘a handful’ of times, maybe seven, she said, but his visits were often short.
She said Mr Johnson ‘really wanted to understand more about what was happening in California’ on the tech scene.
‘My Shoreditch office was on his way home,’ she said. ‘The dancing pole sat in the living room. Yes, he saw the pole. I made a joke once, if he wanted I could show him a few things. I asked him to have a go. It was a laugh and that was it. He sat down with his tea and started muttering.’
Miss Arcuri denied getting any help from the then mayor. She attended three trade missions with him and received grants of public money, but insisted: ‘Never once did I ask him for a favour. Never once did he write a letter of recommendation for me. He didn’t know
‘Really no one’s business’ ‘He sat muttering into his tea’
about my asking to go to trips.’
On suggestions the PM helped her with grants, she said: ‘No, never. On my life. Never. Categorically no.’ Miss Arcuri said their relationship ended after she met her British partner Matthew Hickey. She said: ‘I stopped speaking to Boris, like regularly, when I got pregnant at the end of 2016.’ They have not been in touch since the scandal blew up, she said.
Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the PM ‘misled the public when he said there was no interest to declare’, and called for an inquiry.