Boris Johnson grilled on PM ambitions by 'lethal' school pupils

He has survived multiple grillings by Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys — but Mayor Boris Johnson finally met his match when he was interviewed by six pupils from a south London secondary school.

Faced with tough and repeated questioning on a range of subjects, a clearly flustered Mayor described his interviewers as “lethal” and said: “What is this? Is this Newsnight? You should go on Newsnight.”

He had agreed to be questioned by the Year eight and nine pupils from Norwood School in Lambeth for the BBC’s School Report programme but had perhaps not expected such an ordeal.

Mr Johnson’s attempt to evade a question about whether he wanted to be PM by saying he had “more chance of being reincarnated as an olive” was met with polite scorn from the children, who repeated the query five times.

After a stuttering reference to Roman leader Cincinnatus being “called from his plough” to serve his country, he conceded that “if people genuinely wanted me, then of course I would do it”.

During the interview at City Hall, one boy began his questions by saying: “I know people who have been stabbed in my area. How come gun crime has decreased but knife crime gone up — how can I be sure I won’t be a victim?”

Mr Johnson replied: “One stabbing is one too many but actually the numbers of kids who have been dying from knife crime have been coming down. The police have made a lot of progress. The key thing is about making sure that kids have other things to do, it’s becoming a much, much safer place, so be confident about your city.”

On the Olympic legacy and the promise of more sports facilities for youngsters, one pupil said: “It’s hard to be inspired when there’s nothing for people to do in our area. We go down the park but the football posts are crooked and there are no nets so the ball just rolls down the hill.” The Mayor said he would contact local MP Kate Hoey.

Ola, 13, who grilled Mr Johnson about his ambitions, said: “I didn’t want to appear rude by asking him the same thing but I wanted him to answer the question. I think he’d make a good Prime Minister. He’s got a good sense of humour and he gets on with people.”

Teacher Katy Kovacs said of the pupils: “It would have been easy for us to script the questions but we sat down with them and brainstormed what they really wanted to know about and what mattered to them.”