Gaffe-prone Boris for mayor?

The announcement of his candidature could come as early as today.

The Daily Telegraph report says Conservative party leader David Cameron has already talked privately to Mr Johnson about the job.

Speaking last week, the MP for Henley said he was "definitely not a candidate".

However, when his name first emerged as a possible contender at the start of July, he said: "Being mayor of London would be a fantastic job and anyone who loves London would want to consider the possibility very carefully."

As well as being the Tory party's most high-profile MP, Mr Johnson is famous for the apparently innocent ease with which he gives offence to sections of the population, both in this country and abroad.

Here are five well-known Boris blunders -

Liverpool

In October 2004 The Spectator magazine, of which Boris Johnson was editor at the time, carried an editorial claiming residents of Liverpool were wallowing in "vicarious victimhood" in the wake of the execution in Iraq of Liverpudlian Kenneth Bigley.

He went on to say that Liverpudlians had refused to accept responsibility for their part in the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster.

The then Tory party leader Michael Howard ordered Johnson to make a tour of the city to atone for his insult. Johnson subsequently apologised for the wording of the Spectator piece, conceding that it had been "too trenchantly expressed".

Papua New Guinea

In September 2006 Boris Johnson wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph in which he gloated over the in-fighting that had broken out within the Labour party.

"For 10 years," he wrote, "we in the Tory party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing..."

Papua New Guinea's high commissioner in London responded by saying she was "shocked and appalled" at Mr Johnson's words.

Mr Johnson subsequently apologised, while maintaining that he had been right in attributing the practice of cannibalism to Papua New Guinea's inhabitants.

Acknowleding his habit of giving offence to communities at home and abroad, Mr Johnson said he was happy to add Papua New Guinea to his "global itinerary of apology".

Iran

In October 2006 Mr Johnson wrote an article in which he suggested that Iran should be allowed to go ahead and develop a nuclear bomb. In exchange, he suggested that Iran should give a commitment to embrace democracy and end its threats against Israel.

"If I were the member for Qom South, I would feel that it was my patriotic duty to equip my country, as fast as possible, with the biggest, shiniest, pointiest and most explosive thermonuclear device on the market," he said.

Although the remarks were not in themselves offensive to Iranians, they irritated high-ranking politicians within his own party. The then shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, was said to have been "seriously irritated" by his comments.

Jamie Oliver/healthy eaters

In an address to the Conservative Party conference in October 2006 Mr Johnson said he wanted to "get rid of Jamie Oliver" (the TV chef had earlier that year mounted a campaign to encourage the provision of healthier food in schools).

Mr Johnson went went on to say he hoped that parents would be allowed to push pies through school railings to their children.

He later claimed his remarks had been misinterpreted and said he believed Oliver to be a "national saint" and "a messiah".

Portsmouth

In April 2007 Portsmouth MPs called on Mr Johnson to resign after he claimed in a column for a men's magazine that Portsmouth was "one of the most depressed towns in southern England, a place that is arguably too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs."

Mr Johnson is not known to have apologised for his remarks about Portsmouth.

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