BORIS Andrew Gimson (Simon & Schuster £17.99)

In the introduction to this frequently hilarious book on "the Boris phenomenon" Andrew Gimson tells us that the Henley MP became increasingly nervous about the idea of a biography. With typical bravado he had initially told Gimson: "Such is my colossal vanity that I have no intention of trying to forbid you," before adding for good measure that the book could be "the most fantastic piss-take."

Later, though, the author would have us believe that Boris was prepared to pay him £100,000 to forget the biography.

If so, the Conservative spokesman for higher education must now be mightily relieved that he kept his chequebook in his pocket. For his old friend has not let him down, concluding that we should not rule out BJ as PM, while warning that any effort to "exclude" the blond bombshell on grounds of being too colourful and talented "will never be forgiven".

In a way, the dust-jacket picture says it all. It shows author and subject, drinks in hand, at a bash for the Spectator magazine. Boris, the editor, stares confidently at the camera, with his arm around a trusted sidekick.

Johnson must know how much worse it could have been. Gimson reveals enough about Johnson's lovers and economy with the truth to make you shudder about what a heavyweight investigative journalist and biographer like Michael Crick would have made of the gaffes and misadventures.

Gimson leaves no one in doubt that behind the bumbling toff act is a clever and calculating personality, with a weakness for wanting to be liked.

His disservice is to forget that amid all the fun, his friend is a politician. We read about Johnson's tactics when pursuing women in supermarkets but on the MP's political principles there is nothing. The word Iraq does not even appear in the index.