paul yes guess who we have now you know we often talk about mayor bloomberg who is in his fifth
or sixth term the only public figure who's been in office longer than bloomberg is santa that
uh but we guess who we have tonight we have the mayor of the great city of london wow really yeah
and do you ever think about the mayor of london i surely don't no
well he's here look guess what to see yeah and he has a book he's uh recently re-elected
to his second term as mayor of london he's the author of this book entitled
johnson's life of london uh please welcome your london mayor the honorable boris johnson
welcome to new york city welcome to the show thank you very much for being here it's a
great honor i'm a permanent admirer of you well i find that hard to believe thank you i i i watched
it for many years let me ask you this uh to not love life yeah go ahead i've been all over that
yeah to not love london is to not love life who who said that it was samuel johnson well
he said he who is tired of london is tired of life he also it's a variation on the same thing
is that true today in modern london i think london has and he said because for any man or
woman who is a tall intellectual london has all that life can afford now i think that is true
i'm delighted that you mentioned this this book my purpose is to celebrate london to encourage people
to come to the city and to proclaim the genius of london what uh what is the population of london
the population of london is about 7.8 million is that is it rising or lowering it is growing
i think there's a huge uh final progenitive instinct in the people of london though amazing
london is in fact unlike any other major european city in that the population is is growing let's
put it more simply i remember uh being in paris not long ago and they said just the opposite is
happening in paris so expensive that people are leaving the city and in order to cope with the
demands of the we have to build more homes we have to put in uh a better transportation system as as
people will decide let me ask you about the uh the queen's uh diamond jubilee do you know the queen i
i i've met her better i mean she has a very lively sense of humor and uh i liked your summary of the
diamond do you believe that you did just now i thought it was i thought that was well uh you're
the one it was good but you you left out you you had hat boat hat boat you left out the rain and
the rain was a critical ingredient of what i think and and i heard someone say this was one
of the greatest aquatic triumphs of the british people since trafalgar and uh and it was like
it was like a kind of uh version of dunkirk except with a much jollier outcome yes that's jolly roger
who who pays for the diamond jubilee does the city of london pay for it does the royal family
pay for it well as it's as you know every i try to get everything sponsored and you
may have heard in this in this in this in this country there's a very famous and distinguished
banker called bob diamond and uh i said that we know he if he if he would consent to sponsor
then we'd call it the diamond jubilee and uh how did that go that was yeah that was
i'm making that up just for the avoidance i know he's a very generous guy bob dahmer but
he didn't i have to explain a lot of my jokes yeah okay um now here uh something i've heard
barclays which i think has a presence what you're talking about just settle down
you were born in new york i was born in new york no so doesn't that i i it does and
a fact a fact i tried to conceal from the electorate of london but doesn't that make
you an american citizen it does and and uh it does a count a joint a jointly in america
this will be broadcast in london and uh and i i wish i wish to make it absolutely clear that
my parents are british i happened i was born here i wanted to be close to my mother at the time and
that was that was where that was where she was how old were you when you moved back
uh to london i was five five years old uh do you remember much of that time in new york uh not so
much new york because we moved to washington and and uh connecticut and and i remember america
i remember vividly and i have you know i have a a lifelong i think it's just too corny it's
so it's a most wonderful most wonderful country and of course perhaps i can correct that it's a
glutinous sentiment by saying i regard america as the proudest creation of london after all since it
was the idea that it was i can it was the ideals of of liberty and democracy and happiest corpus
and freedom of speech that grew up in 18th century london which were which were transmitted would you
not say fine i just just you're among friends everything's fine okay um thank you and the
olympics coming up big summer for london that'll be fantastic wanted are the facilities ready to go
it's all going to be fantastic yeah and and and you know you are you're almost welcome to come
i would love to come i would love to come but i know what can you do can you do a show from
london we did years and years ago did shows from london well no this is the year to do it again
yeah um i can't travel i just saw your doctor give her give you a clean bill of health
exactly your impaired cognitive faculty i remember the first time i was in london was 1972
and i thought whoa this is lovely what a what a wonderful and it seemed like it had
not yet been touched by american commerce you didn't see mcdonald's you didn't you didn't see
uh piggly wiggly you didn't see you know what i'm saying yeah i think we were pretty poor back then
i think i think things for things where things weren't going so well for the economy but yeah
and things have got much better now tell people what you've done for the transportation system of
your city well as i hope people will discover if they come uh this summer there has been a massive
investment in the tube network we've upgraded put air conditioning on uh 40 of the the tube
lines which is good because you know we've got a very old system we've got a massive new uh fast uh
crosstown system called crossrail coming in we've got uh a wonderful new bus we've restored to the
streets of london the hop-on hop-off that's what i remember before do you remember you
could get drunk and fall over backwards that's right and that was banned in the name of health
and safety and uh we we've now restored that but talk about the the bicycle sorry and the bicycle
thing which i believe is coming to new york city that's entirely correct i'm a great fan of a
great fan of your mayor uh of mike bloomberg well he's you know he's taking the fun out of fun city
no no i'm i'm i'm a i'm a big big could you ban giant sodas in london
you know we're not as we are i mean i me i may wait way more than mike but uh
as a as a city we are not quite as as as fat as the as uh
if i can put this i mean not yet not yet i mean i
i gotta be i gotta be honest about this we're not we're not there yet
why can't you why can't you have a rule that you've got to put more ice in it because yeah
you're right you're talking to the wrong guy i don't know what to tell you yeah but now let's get
back to the bicycle thing i love this they're free bikes yeah you get a communist scheme you write it
across town drop it off you pick another one up write it back home that's right it's an entirely
communist uh scheme put in by a conservative mayor and it works beautifully how many bikes
do you have on the streets uh we we've got more than six thousand lives and it's the same thing
as coming here to new york city that's right fantastic that's right and uh i i congratulate
uh mike bloomberg i hesitate to endorse i i once last time he was standing for election i i came
here and he was in a you know quite a tough fight it turned out and i i asked him whether it would
be at all useful to him for me to endorse him right and and he thought about this for a while
and then he said on the whole he'd much referred if i resoundingly endorsed his opponent he thought
be you thought that'd be rude you don't need to take that you're a big important man but i'm a
supporter nonetheless yes and uh so um and how long have you been cutting your own hair
i was beginning to think i'd got through this more sunscreen yeah you know
you'd mentioned the book quite a few times no i think it's a lovely thing and
look here you are on your bicycles there you are right there there you go and will you run
you just re-elected how many terms can you serve as la mayor well i've this will be my
second term it is my i might and i've said uh a fact and i regret i've said that i won't i
won't run more than that's it so is there a possibility you could become prime minister
i i think that that is vanishing i mean about as much chance of of being reincarnated as an olive
why would you say that because politics is nothing being blinded by a champion
but it's nothing if not ambition why why couldn't you think about being prime minister
you could if you wanted to well i suppose i could i mean as you've already pointed out i could
be president of the united states yeah well you know there's no you know technically speaking but
you know there are i think there are there are limits to the credulity of our audience
you know that's that's that's what i would say you think the hair is holding you back honestly
do you know until you mentioned it until you mentioned it tonight yes i never
i never i'd never regarded it as a drawback all right well it's a wonderful city and it's going to
be a wonderful summer even without the olympics it would be a wonderful remember it rains all summer
in london doesn't it it rains more in rome it's more in rome in rome here's the book ladies and
gentlemen mayor boris johnson it's a johnson's life of london there you have it that's the man
great pleasure to meet you your honor thank you very much