Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2005, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Music

My cast away this week is a politician and a journalist.

Prune to getting into scrapes a word that suits his rather woodhousing image, he's one of the best known Tory MPs in the House of Commons.

As editor of the weekly magazine The Spectator, he's taken it to the highest circulation in its history, while losing his job on the opposition front bench for misleading the leadership about his affair with one of his colleagues.

His articles can cause dismay too, he was severely criticized for a leader accusing the people of Liverpool of wallowing in sentimentality over the murder of Ken Bigley in Iraq.

But his self-deprecating humour and his often shambolic appearance can seal a cleverness and a self-confidence that for all his mishaps might yet take him further in politics, which appears to be his ambition.

He freely admits to being, and I quote, propelled by an egomania, a desire to go on, get on, have a go. He is Boris Johnson.

So if you were Boris, you're laughing at this quote, it is, you did say it actually.

I suppose I must have done it.

But if you had to choose between journalism and politics, and you might, who knows, one day have to do so. You choose politics, would you?

Yes, of course, but I didn't think I'd abandon journalism.

Would have to, I mean, people have told you time and again you can't write two horses, you probably proved you can't write two horses.

I think I've successfully ridden two horses for quite a long time, but I have to admit there have been moments when the distance between the two horses has been terrifyingly wise.

Did you write documents?

And I did momentfully come off.

Well, we've come back to it, but if you had to choose...

Well, I didn't sincerely hate we weren't.

But if you had to choose, you would choose, would you, politics?

Yes, of course, yes, yes. I always wanted to do it. I knew I was going to be an MP, and I always knew I'd be very disappointed myself.

If I didn't do it. I mean, I didn't read Hansard as a pre-pubescent, but I certainly was always interested in it.

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