Jennifer Arcuri tells of ‘four-year affair’ with Boris Johnson and calls him ‘cowardly’

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Get our free View from Westminster email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. But the man I thought I knew doesn’t exist any more.” She describes first meeting him at a tech event and remembers: “He’d turn the whole room into a bunch of howling schoolgirls. “He went to the bar and came back within a minute and said, ‘Jennifer can I borrow £3.10?’ I thought, ‘I’m a student buying you a beer, you should be ashamed of yourself’.” After a second dinner date at Ciao Bella on Lamb’s Conduit Street, Mr Johnson reportedly told her: “I want to date you, you’re the only American I’ve ever fancied.” He also allegedly tried to kiss her in the street, which she laughed off, suggesting he was being incautious. As the affair progressed, Ms Arucri says they bonded over a love of William Shakespeare’s sonnets and that she sent him intimate photographs, one of which he allegedly described as “enough to make a bishop kick through a stained-glass window,” the phrase apparently lifted from the legendary crime writer Raymond Chandler. None of these words I would use to describe Boris Johnson.” The Greater London Authority is currently investigating whether Mr Johnson breached the Nolan Principles of Public Life, the code of conduct by which the city mayor is expected to abide, by not confessing his affair with Ms Arcuri.