London mayor turns Games into political gold

UK: London mayor Boris Johnson has had a golden political Olympics, emerging for the first time as a serious contender for prime minister despite -- or perhaps because of -- his clownish antics.

During the Games, the 48-year-old has whipped up huge crowds chanting his name, described beach volleyball players as “glistening like wet otters” and even found himself dangling helplessly from a zip wire.

By turning even the most unpromising situations into political gold, the Conservative with the distinctive mop of blond hair is increasingly being tipped for the job of his former schoolmate, Prime Minister David Cameron.

“This is Britain. The British do have a taste for eccentrics, more than many countries. It's nearly always a good thing to be seen as an eccentric,” political analyst Tony Travers of the London School of Economics told AFP.

Johnson's Olympian journey began in typically bizarre fashion at the end of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

He mystified his Chinese hosts with a speech saying that ping pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th cenutury, when it was called “wiff-waff”.

But he started to come into his own the day before the start of the London Games, when he whipped up a crowd by mocking US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who had questioned London's readiness to stage the Games. In scenes that must have haunted James Cameron as his beleagured national government languishes in the polls, around 60,000 people in Hyde Park chanted “Bo-ris, Bo-ris”. AFP