Former London mayor Ken Livingston furious with Boris Johnson for wine slur

Jun 8 2008

FORMER London mayor Ken Livingstone blasted Boris Johnson yesterday for claiming he found 100 bottles of fine wine in his office.

Livid Livingstone said: "I have never bought a bottle of fine wine in my life."

He insisted there was no booze there when he left and described his Tory replacement's comments as "a libel".

Johnson claimed that when he moved into the mayor's City Hall office, he found "rows and rows of glistening Chateauneuf du Pape. A goodly hoard, over a hundred bottles".

He said there was a cupboard with "a fridge, stocked with several bottles" and an "astonishing collection of wine" in another cupboard.

But Johnson admitted: "Whether they're Greater London Authority bottles of wine or his own, we have yet to discover."