Boris Johnson: Trivia overload

To London for lunch with my new friends at the New Statesman.

While I was down there I bought a copy of the magazine - it seemed the least I could do. But to a provincial it does seem terribly decadent getting it on a Thursday. It does not reach Leicester until Friday.

This week's issue contains a couple of good articles on Boris Johnson. In one of them Sholto Byrnes provides more trivial connections than even I can cope with:

Boris's stepmother Jenny, the second wife of his father Stanley, is the stepdaughter of Edward Sieff, the former chairman of Marks & Spencer. This also provides a link to two politicians he was later to encounter in the House of Commons: Edward Sieff's son Adam, the urbane record executive, has the distinction of having been in a Seventies rock band, Jaded, that was promoted at different times by both Tony Blair and Chris Huhne.