Profile: Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson's victory in the London mayoral election is a major breakthrough both for himself and the Conservatives.

His success is a huge coup for David Cameron's Conservatives and complete his own personal transformation from buffoonish TV star to heavyweight politician.

When the Conservatives began looking for a mayoral candidate to replace Steve Norris, it was widely accepted he or she would need to be a high-profile figure.

From all the names mentioned, they found the biggest: Johnson, journalist, Henley MP and one of the party's best-known faces. He is, it has been noted, probably the only Tory MP whose name has been used as a football chant.

Dominating a primary open all Londoners, he went on to be elected as candidate by an overwhelming 75 per cent of the vote.

But his selection was still a huge risk for the party.

Johnson's parliamentary biography is slender - elected in 2001 as successor to Michael Heseltine in the safe seat of Henley, he was vice chairman (campaigning) of the party between 2003 and 2004, shadow arts minister and then shadow higher education minister - and he had developed a reputation for being unreliable.

However the mayoral campaign has seen him come of age, with tightly controlled messages designed to woo Tory voters in London's outer suburbs and very few gaffes.

Outside of politics, the former Telegraph Brussels correspondent became editor of the Spectator as well as chief political commentator of the Telegraph.

He has published various collections of journalism, a first novel in 2004, and in 2003 earned up to £130,000 from articles and media appearances.

His stint as guest host of Have I Got News for You brought his bumbling manner and self-deprecating humour to the wider public, despite only appearing on the show seven times.

Born in New York, his great-grandfather was the last interior minister in the imperial Turkish government, and his grandfather Osman Ali was an asylum seeker who changed his name to Johnson.

In 2004 he was forced by leader Michael Howard to go to Liverpool to apologise for a Spectator editorial, written by Simon Heffer, which accused the city's people of "wallowing in victim status". Johnson later referred to the trip as "operation Scouse grovel".

It was after this episode he was immortalised in a chant, "There's only one Boris Johnson", by Manchester United fans in a game against Everton at Liverpool's Goodison Park.

His first front-bench job as arts spokesman came to an end when he was sacked for lying about his affair with Spectator colleague Petronella Wyatt.

In 2006 there were reports of another affair, but this time new leader David Cameron said it was a private issue.

He resigned as editor of the Spectator in 2005 to become shadow minister for higher education after Cameron made it clear he would have to choose between careers.

The press is fascinated by Johnson, and media scrums seem to form easily around him - perhaps most memorably at party conference in 2006 when he defended the right of mothers to push pies through school railings.

Popular as much for his quips as his gaffes, he defended maligned university degrees: "One man's Mickey Mouse course is another man's literae humaniores."

He divorced his first wife and married Marina in 1993. They have four children.

Like David Cameron he is an old Etonian and former member of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford University, and a cyclist.

Defending his habit of using a mobile phone while on his bike, he said: "Just as I will never vote to ban hunting, so I will never vote to abolish the free-born Englishman's time-hallowed and immemorial custom, dating back as far as 1990 or so, of cycling while talking on a mobile."

Johnson resigned as shadow higher education minister to concentrate on the mayoral campaign, and has promised to stand down as member for Henley after being elected to City Hall.