Hard-pressed – Boris Johnson a PM made by newspapers
Former Star man recalls new PM Boris Johnson’s time in the newsroom.
Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. It is fair to say both were a great influence on the career of Boris Johnson.
But there is somebody else that the prime minister cites as his mentor along the road to Downing Street – David Knight.
Mr Johnson has frequently spoken fondly of his old boss, who he briefly worked for during a three-month stint at the Shropshire Star’s sister paper the Express & Star in 1988.
“Dave Knight taught me everything I know,” the new Tory leader said during an interview three years ago.
Mr Johnson reminisced about Mr Knight during a visit to Shropshire last month, and made a video recording wishing him well for his retirement in January.
Mr Knight, now living in Aberdeen, says Mr Johnson was one of six trainees from The Times who were seconded for three-month spells at the Express & Star as part of their introduction to the world of journalism.
But Mr Knight says Boris was the one who stood-out from the pack, although he was not thrilled about having to look after the cub reporter, who would have been about 23 at the time.
“I had never done any mentoring in my life,” he says. “To be honest it wasn’t something I wanted to do, as you can imagine as chief reporter there were plenty of other things I wanted to be doing.”
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But he says the young man’s engaging personality quickly made an impression on everybody he came into contact with.
“When Boris turned up, you can imagine the impact he had,” he recalls.
“He looked and sounded pretty much exactly the same as he does now.
“He came across as quite nervous, the interesting thing about him was that he had this persona of being a slightly eccentric, slightly bewildered character.
“He was like somebody who had wandered in from Harry Potter or something, and you don’t very often see that in somebody so young.”
Mr Knight says his plummy voice and his educational background – he spent four years studying Classics at Balliol College, Oxford – made him unlike anybody else he had worked with.
“One of the funniest things was Boris interviewing this bloke with a broad Black Country accent about aliens,” he recalls.
“It was the typical thing, where somebody, probably a bit of nutter, said he had seen a UFO in Wolverhampton, and there he was talking to him on the phone about it all.”
But despite being from a very different background to most of the people he encountered, he remembers the young Boris as making friends easily.
Mr Knight says he always felt his protege was destined for great things – even if he didn’t predict him becoming Prime Minister.
“He was very warm and friendly, very likeable, and I think that is playing out now,” he says.
“There was something about Boris that you couldn’t help but like, he was so friendly, and you always detected that behind that persona there was something very sharp about him.
“I remember saying that he was going to be something special. I don’t recall saying ‘that guy’s going to be prime minister’, but I remember thinking he’s going to be famous for something.”
At the end of his placement, Boris returned to The Times, and the men’s paths would not cross again for three decades.
But then Mr Johnson name-checked him in an interview in June 2016, shortly before the EU referendum.
“He said, ‘I remember Dave Knight, he was my mentor, he taught me everything I know’,” he says.
“He was asking if anybody knew if I was still alive, so I wrote him a letter, saying I was still around. He wrote back saying he was glad I’m still alive, and thanking me for all I had done for him.
“And when I retired in January, they played me this short video he had made wishing me well, and recalling the story about the aliens.
“He’s got a good memory. People say he hasn’t got an eye for detail, but he remembers that detail pretty well.
“It shows how, when you are young, somebody can have a big impact on your life. I have nothing but fond memories of him.”
Mr Knight, who lived in Tettenhall at the time, left the Express & Star in 1993, and went on to become deputy editor of the Press & Journal in Aberdeen.
He says it will be interesting to see how Mr Johnson copes with the challenges he will face as Prime Minister in the turbulent times we live in.
“He’s an unusual character, but we have seen all the usual, dull, managerial types, and how they have made a mess of everything,” he says.
“Maybe it’s time to try something a little different.
“I know he has written books about Winston Churchill, and he was not very popular before he became prime minister,” he says.
“In the First World War he was blamed for the slaughter at the Dardanelles, at Gallipoli, but 25 years later he was the war leader. He was the right man at the right time, and maybe this is Boris’s time.
“He might crash and burn, I don’t know. But maybe they said the same about Churchill.”
