Billion-dollar Boris set to net a fortune

MR Johnson could become ‘Billion Dollar Boris’ if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.

Experts say he will ‘eclipse Tony Blair’ and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.

Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was ‘chicken feed’, is estimated to ‘easily’ earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for ‘at least’ £1million. He may also now have time to pen his long delayed biography of William Shakespeare.

Mr Johnson signed a deal for Shakespeare: The Riddle of Genius in mid-2015 for a reported £500,000 advance. But publishers Hodder & Stoughton told the Guardian last year that it had not scheduled the book to be published ‘for the foreseeable future’.

PR guru Mark Borkowski said: ‘Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it’s going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He’s a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.’

In Mr Johnson’s backbench days, he was earning about £830,000 for newspaper columns, books, speeches and TV appearances. As PM he was in the top 1 per cent of earners taking home £155,367 – but he could earn double that with one 20-minute speech.

While he is likely to be offered his Telegraph column back, Mr Borkowski believes he could land a lucrative deal with the likes of Fox in America. ‘He is going to eclipse Tony Blair. The guy understands entertainment, he understands celebrity, and to put those two powerful things together with the right sort of team he’s going to be a big attraction. People want to know about the last days of Boris,’ he said.

‘His memoirs could easily make £1million. I would have thought there was a queue of agents in America who want him.’