Boris’s love life? Colourful does not even begin to describe it...
NEWS of the Prime Minister’s engagement to Carrie Symonds marks the latest chapter in his colourful – and at times jaw-droppingly turbulent – love life.
The 55-year-old, who is famously tight-lipped about his rollercoaster private life, has been married twice before, has conducted a string of affairs and has an unconfirmed number of children.
Boris married his Oxford University sweetheart Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1987 but they divorced in 1993 after he cheated on her with Marina Wheeler, a high-flying lawyer.
Boris was a childhood friend of Marina – the daughter of the BBC journalist Charles Wheeler – when both were pupils at the European School in Brussels. The pair married in May 1993, just 12 days after his divorce from Allegra was finalised and when Marina was heavily pregnant with their first child.
Their 25-year marriage was buffeted by Boris’s infidelity. Marina threw Boris out of the marital home in 2004 over his affair with journalist Petronella Wyatt, the daughter of Labour grandee Lord Wyatt.
Mr Johnson tried to brush off stories about the affair as an ‘inverted pyramid of piffle’ but was sacked from his role as a Shadow Minister by then Tory leader Michael Howard for lying about the relationship.
Ms Wyatt said Boris once told her: ‘I find it genuinely unreasonable that men should be confined to one woman.’
Boris was also rumoured to have been having an affair at the same time with journalist Anna Fazackerley, but this was never officially confirmed.
His reputation as a lothario did not prevent him from sweeping to power as London Mayor in 2008. But any hopes that Marina may have held that high office would calm her husband down were dashed the following year when he is said to have fathered a child with arts consultant Helen Macintyre, causing him to be thrown out of the family home again.
Boris and Marina’s marriage finally ended last year, and the pair reached a financial agreement last month. After her parents’ split, their eldest daughter Lara reportedly told friends at a party that her father was a ‘selfish b ****** ’. ‘Mum is finished with him. She will never take him back now,’ she reportedly said.
Despite being repeatedly asked, Boris has steadfastly refused to pin down exactly how many children he has fathered. It is known he has two sons and two daughters with Marina as well as a daughter from his affair with Ms Macintyre.