Boris Johnson complains he needed to wander round No10 in his boxers to seek out misplaced takeaways
Boris Johnson has complained that life in No10 was a “nightmare” – if he wanted to order a takeaway.
The former Prime Minister said he was sometimes found wandering around Downing Street in his boxers as he tried to retrieve lost orders for him and his wife Carrie. Speaking on the Rosebud podcast, he said: “I tell you one thing about living at No10 – it’s a nightmare if you want to order a takeaway.
“The number of evenings we would order some Chinese, or some Lebanese, or whatever and then the guy would say ‘I’m sorry, they’re not letting me in, they say I can’t come this way’. He’d say – ‘the police are telling me to go away’.”
Mr Johnson went on: “We would have to go round to Number 70 Whitehall, which was the only place where they were allowed to make deliveries – a long way away from the No11 flat where we lived.
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10 Downing Street/AFP via Getty)
“And I would have to pad in my boxer shorts, or whatever I was wearing at the time, all the way through down to 70 Whitehall, and then try to persuade the guards at 70 Whitehall to let the kebabs through – by which time of course they’d have probably gone home again.
“I don’t know how many takeaway meals simply disappeared because of the difficulty penetrating the defences of No10.”
He’s not the first former PM to moan about life in Downing Street. Liz Truss, who only lasted 49 days in No10, complained it was “noisy” and her husband Hugh found it difficult to get Ocado orders delivered there.
In her book, she said the online retailer initially thought the order was a hoax and then when her husband called to find out where the shopping was, “only to be told that the order had actually been received some time ago. No10 officials had indeed taken delivery of it but didn’t want to disturb the Prime Minister.”
She also said the No11 flat, where the PM usually lives, was “soulless” and “really noisy”, adding: “There was an almost constant backdrop of chanting and shouting through megaphones from protesters camped out on Whitehall”.
