Chickenfeed?

Looks like our intrepid mayor, Boris Johnson, has got himself into some hot water. Whoops.

He gets paid £250,000 a year by The Daily Telegraph to write a weekly column compared to his annual salary of £140,000 as Mayor of London. When, during an interview for Hardtalk, Stephen Sackur asked him about it the first word to come out of his mouth was “chickenfeed.” A throwaway line that you can tell he regretted almost immediately.

Okay, it probably wasn’t the cleverest thing to say but portraying Boris as out of touch is a little wide of the mark. It was a joke. And I don’t see the point in criticising him for having a second income. It doesn’t interfere with the job he was elected to do and provides a valuable point of communication to London voters and the rest of the country.

Besides, if you could be paid that kind of money to churn out an article every Sunday you would, wouldn’t you?

You can watch the clip here.