From Boudica to Bush: Johnson’s top women

ASKED to pick their five favourite women, most men might play it safe and choose their fiancée or mother.

However, Boris Johnson has selected his “groovy” No10 policy adviser Munira Mirza, Celtic queen Boudica and the singer Kate Bush.

Female education campaigner Malala Yousafzai and his grandmother, Yvonne Eileen Irene Williams, also made the cut.

The Prime Minister was asked to select the five women who have influenced and inspired him the most to mark International Women’s Day on Sunday.

He selected Nobel Prize-winning Yousafzai first, whom he met in 2014 in his role as mayor of London.

He told Grazia magazine: “She was so brave, so right and so luminously idealistic that I could see I was in the presence of a modern-day saint.”

Ms Mirza, the director of the policy unit at No10, was chosen for being “the person” he believes can sort out the biggest issues facing the country.

He picked his grandmother – known as “Granny Butter” – for what he called her “sheer unconquerable optimism”.

Boudica was selected for her bravery, with Mr Johnson insisting that her spirit is “alive” in post-brexit Britain.

He said: “Boudica’s posterity ended up with an empire seven times bigger than the Roman empire at its vastest.

“And who can say her spirit is not alive in the country today.”

Mr Johnson’s fifth and final choice appeared to cause him some difficulty.

After debating over whether to pick the Queen or Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister eventually plumped Wuthering Heights singer Kate Bush, saying the British artist “wrote what is surely one of the world’s greatest ever pop songs”.