UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he wants to keep how many children can call him “father” a secret, explaining he wishes to protect them amid the political heat before the snap elections on 12 December.
"I love my children very much, but they are not standing at this election, and I am not therefore going to comment. I am not going to put them on to the pitch in this election”, he said during an LBC interview.
Johnson, who separated from his wife of many years Marina Wheeler in 2018 and is living at Downing Street with 31-year-old PR-specialist Carrie Symonds, also snubbed the question if he is going to have more children: "I'm not going to get into discussions (on this)”.
His secrecy amid this scandal raised questions from the Twitter crowd as some seemed suspicious. Some are now demanding than he reveals how many children he’s fathered.
Johnson’s turbulent love life has long been a topic of public curiosity, providing gossip columns and tabloids with fodder.
Apart from the scandalous romance with his current partner, a legal battle made headlines several years ago and revealed he had a daughter from an affair with art adviser Helen Macintyre. In 2013, the then-mayor of London sought an injunction to stop reports about the girl born in 2009, who became his fifth child in addition to 2 sons and 2 daughters by lawyer Wheeler. However, as an article on Wikipedia says, Johnson may have fathered 6 children.
Amid the debates about Boris Johnson's children, his dad has prompted his own Twitterstorm with a remark about Britons’ literacy. When Stanley Johnson talked to the BBC, the anchor told him "One of our viewers called your son Pinocchio”.
"That requires a degree of literacy which I think the great British public doesn't necessarily have. They couldn't spell Pinocchio if they tried, I should have thought”, he joked.
The joke prompted a backlash among netizens who were offended by the elder Johnson’s remark.