WHAT MAKES BORIS SO IRRESISTIBLE TO WOMEN?
As Boris Johnson’s 25-year marriage ends amid reports of his latest affair, we ask why such attractive and intelligent women fall under his spell
Daily Express Tuesday September 11 2018
BORIS JOHNSON once declared it was unreasonable for men to remain faithful to one woman. The irony that he reportedly said this to his onetime mistress Petronella Wyatt is lost on nobody and it comes as little surprise that his roving eye has landed him in hot water again.
Claims of an affair with a blonde Tory aide have cost the former foreign secretary his marriage to barrister wife Marina Wheeler, who was yesterday allegedly preparing to serve divorce papers branding him an “adulterer”.
As Boris faces revelations about his relationship with former Tory communications director Carrie Symonds, including rumours of trysts in a hotel and restaurant, a former journalist colleague said the latest chapter in Boris’s complicated love life is true to type.
“This is following a fairly familiar pattern,” says the source. “He is addicted to danger and addicted to women. It is part of his DNA, like breathing.”
Boris’s extra-marital affairs have been well documented. He wed his first wife Allegra MostynOwen in 1987 after they met at Oxford but split when he had an affair with Marina. They married in 1993 but seven years later Boris, 54, embarked on a four-year affair with Petronella Wyatt, daughter of the late Labour grandee Lord Wyatt, while he was editor of The Spectator and she was his deputy.
Petronella fell pregnant and suffered a miscarriage, as she revealed in a book she wrote about their affair. It became public knowledge when her mother revealed the details, including the damaging claim that Boris had promised NEW LOVE INTEREST? Carrie Symonds to leave Marina for Petronella. Marina threw him out in 2004, only for the couple to get back together some months later. By then an MP for Henley, Boris was sacked as shadow arts minister for lying about the affair, which he had dismissed as “an inverted pryamid of piffle”.
It has been suggested that Boris’s liaison with Petronella overlapped with his next affair with Anna Fazackerley, a journalist on the Times Educational Supplement while he was a junior shadow education minister.
In 2009 he began a romance with arts consultant Helen Macintyre and fathered a child with her. His wife kicked him out again – only to take him back once more. Full details of the affair emerged in court after Ms Macintyre lost a three-year legal battle to stop the press naming Boris as the father of their daughter Stephanie. The Appeal Court heard in 2013 that Stephanie was alleged to be the second child conceived as a result of Boris’s extra-marital affairs. Indeed friends of Marina said yesterday that she fears Boris may have had up to 10 affairs during their 25-year marriage – a fact which has left many women scratching their heads, asking: what is so appealing about Boris? Relationship coach Jo Hemmings has the answer: “It’s simple and as old as the hills, a potent combination of power and money but with a lot of humour thrown in.” Hemmings says that Boris is so disarming that women who don’t think they are attracted to him find themselves falling under his spell. “He’s charming, bright and mischievous, just as long as you’re not looking for anything serious. In this latest alleged relationship it could be that Carrie has issued an ultimatum, as has been reported, and demanded that he divorce Marina. To be the one who tames the untameable playboy is a real coup but she can’t go into it with her eyes shut with his history and I suggest he’ll never change his ways.” One Westminster insider said Boris always has his eye on the next challenge, which is why he tires of people, jobs and roles easily: “I have travelled with him and he is always scanning the room for the next photo opportunity, for the next stunt he can perform which will grab the headlines.” Amid claims that this latest revelation has alienated some Tory MPs, Daily Express political editor Macer Hall said that it may sit uncomfortably with women voters too: “We live in a less censorious age but some voters might think, if his own wife can’t trust him why should the country? Certainly the latest polling suggests that his popularity has been damaged.” Several people who know Boris point to his Eton