Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Counting down the days until London elects its next mayor. Excitement is palpable. And the very latest poll shows a narrow lead for the Fauvist Boris Johnson. The Guardian/ICM survey has the Tory candidate ahead with 42 per cent, compared with Labour's Ken Livingstone on 41 per cent and the Liberal Democrat, Brian Paddick, with 10 per cent. The poll suggested that trust was a big issue for voters, with only 28 percent thinking that Ken was the most honest candidate, compared with 38 percent for Boris. And just as the poll hit the streets, Red Ken dropped his trousers, so to speak. He admitted that he had five children by three different women — two daughters by one woman and a son by another, in addition to the two children with his current partner, Emma Beale. The tabloids are on the job and so are the broadsheets.

In the interests of fairness, we should point out that in November 2004 it emerged that Boris Johnson had had a four-year extra-marital affair with Petronella Wyatt, New York correspondent of The Spectator, which he edited. Boris initially denied the allegations but was later sacked by Michael Howard, then Conservative leader. But in the interests of equality we should add that while Ken was busy rolling out the red mayoral carpet for bigots of all stripes, the brave Boris was in Zimbabwe's Mashonaland in April 2002 and "only a couple of hundred yards away from the thugs wielding pipes, swords and guns who have been persecuting the local farmers." Rainy Day is backing Boris.