By Sonia Purnell

PUBLISHED: 11:30 EST, 13 June 2012 | UPDATED: 11:36 EST, 13 June 2012

Bad decision: Boris Johnson has made a visit to North America to plug his latest book, despite the imminence of the London Olympics

Bad decision: Boris Johnson has made a visit to North America to plug his latest book, despite the imminence of the London Olympics

I wish it wasn’t so. I wish I could report on a re-elected and re-energised London mayor leading our great capital through what most of us can agree is a bit of a hard slog. The Jubilee is over, but roads and bridges are still unaccountably blocked. The rain never stops, and nor does the chaos on the Tube. Even the Evening Standard, which enthusiastically urged readers to vote Boris Johnson only a month ago, has now decided that London is currently “heaving under a cloud of impending chaos.”

Simon Jenkins, its Boris-backing columnist, railed earlier this week that “Gun-toting militia, claiming to be police, haul motorists aside in the name of “Olympic security”. Misshapen towers have risen over the City. One in five shops is boarded up. The air is filled with police sirens. This is not the casual, carefree London I used to know. It seems a sinister place where it rains all the time and the river has turned grey/brown, like the Limpopo. Were I sentimental, I would say the old place was weeping in grief. The truth is that London is assailed by trauma.” And where is the mayor, Sir Simon? “The mayor has gone to New York,” he writes, “reportedly mad.”

I cannot vouch for his madness or otherwise, but Johnson’s trip to North America just six weeks ahead of the world descending on his city for the Olympics, just after nearly a million people gave him a second four-year mandate, when his creaking transport system is showing signs of a dangerous nervous breakdown, when his police force is mired in yet another racism scandal and facing the biggest anti-terrorist challenge in its history, is at first glance rather, um, odd.

Even odder is the fact that the mayor of London was not on an official visit on behalf of his city but on a private jaunt – taken as annual leave – to publicise his book ‘Johnson’s Life of London.’ (The sixth book to be published by Johnson, it has been described by A.N. Wilson as ‘the longest personal manifesto’ in mayoral history, in which every page is a ‘coded plea’ for votes.) To this purpose Johnson has undertaken what must have been an exhausting schedule of press interviews – such as with the Toronto Star where he pronounced rather tactlessly that he had never even heard of the city’s mayor Rob Ford – and TV appearances – including an A-list celebrity slot on the David Letterman Late Show.

The Evening Standard, which supported Boris in the Mayoral elections, has since conceded that London is 'heaving under a cloud of impending chaos'

The Evening Standard, which supported Boris in the Mayoral elections, has since conceded that London is 'heaving under a cloud of impending chaos'

Amidst all the joking about his typically mussed-up hair – ‘How long have you been cutting it yourself?’ asked Letterman – Johnson has pushed his book. He has held it up to the camera, talked about it, said ‘book’ when his hosts weren’t mentioning it, all just in case the point was not being made sufficiently loud and clear. Indeed, on more than one occasion Letterman actually advised the mayor of London to ‘calm down’. Imagine if he were our prime minister!

Johnson’s formidable talents as an entertainer were nevertheless on display for all America to enjoy. He got a good laugh when he promised New Yorkers, facing a ban on large helpings of pop from their own mayor Michael Bloomberg, ‘sanctuary’ from this ‘soda tryanny’ in London. He presented himself as a great fan of Letterman and indeed Bloomberg too – at least until he realised that the Bloomberg anti-soda regime was wildly unpopular.

Much of his airtime, though, was spent plugging his book. But among his pronouncements, when pressed on London, Johnson declared that last year’s riots were not protests or manifestations of a social malaise but ‘eruptions of materialistic randomness,’ and that as part of his great works on transport, 40 per cent of tube lines have air conditioning (actually, they won’t until 2016).

Larger than life: London Mayor Boris Johnson on The Late Show

Larger than life: London Mayor Boris Johnson gesticulates wildly as he appears on The Late Show with David Letterman in New York

These assertions would have been news to some people back in London if Johnson’s bizarre departure had been more widely reported. Instead, there has been more of a flurry of interest in a story suggesting that Johnson had hired his first wife Allegra Mostyn-Owen to join his Muslim Taskforce – presumably on the basis that she is now married to a Muslim man half her age. Much prominence was given to the fact that the appointment came via a ten-word text from the mayor short on detail including whether she was to be paid or not. An evidently delighted Mostyn-Owen said there had been, however, a mayoral silence ever since.

Indeed, interested observers have found it difficult to track down the said taskforce. Inquiries to City Hall were met with an official response: "We are still in the process of reviewing our community engagement programme and we seek to work with all faiths and all communities across the capital."

Indeed, it was explained that press reports of her appointment or the existence of a taskforce were, perhaps in the manner of Mark Twain’s death, ‘exaggerated’. So there we have it. A ‘reportedly mad’ mayor, a non-existent or at least mysteriously secret task force and a heavily publicised book. Not a bad first month’s work then.