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Hello, I'm Matthew Price.

This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.

Every day we ask one big question about one big story.

Today, who is a story?

Today, who is Boris Johnson?

A few years ago, Boris Johnson was asked if he wanted to be Prime Minister and he didn't really answer the question.

All politicians in the end are like kind of crazed, wasps in a jam jar, each individually convinced that they're going to make it and get out and survive.

And of course, I don't know, kind of thing I got lost in my metaphor here about the wasps in the jam jar.

So you're either cringing now or smiling.

Either that was a load of painful nothingness or it was some sort of comedic cheery eccentricity. Boris Johnson is divisive. The Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Now students and journalists and politicians who live and breathe politics would have laughed just a few

years ago if I or anyone else had said it's going to happen.

This episode is about the mistakes that Boris Johnson has made along the way, but why in the end his ambition, his sheer force of personality got him there.

He's gone from being a journalist, twisting the truth and even making up quotes for front-page news stories,

to becoming a politician exposed for his lack of attention to detail,

and now the most powerful person in the country.

We're going to start with the Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine

with a story that he thinks tells you everything you need to know about Boris Johnson.

This all happened 12, 13 years ago, middle of the 2000s, it was a dinner and I had been hired to give out some

awards and maybe say a few funny remarks. And I remember it was something like the International

Securitization Awards.

...