London mayor defiant over Beijing button episode

Posted 08 29 2008 10:25PM

LONDON (AFP) - London's mayor defended his relaxed attitude to the Beijing Olympics closing ceremony on Thursday, revealing he had ignored requests by Chinese officials to button up his jacket for the big event.

Johnson received the Olympic flag from Beijing Mayor Guo Jinlong during the closing ceremony on Sunday because London is hosting the next games in 2012.

Shortly beforehand, he had been pestered by Chinese officials to do up the buttons of his jacket, he said.

"I became aware of a chap beaming and pointing at his midriff," he wrote in the Spectator magazine.

"Then another chap was pointing at me, jabbing his finger in the direction of my stomach. Was I too fat? Was I insufficiently Olympian? 'Button,' said the chap. Do up button.'"

Noting that all those around him had done up their jacket buttons, including his "charming" counterpart Guo, he wrote: "I reached instinctively for my middle button and then thought, sod it."

Echoing the language of human rights groups which criticised China over the Olympics, he added that he had wanted to follow "a policy of openness, transparency and individual freedom.

"I am sad to see that some Chinese bloggers are now attacking me for my 'lack of respect', since there was no disrespect intended," he added.

"It's just that there are times when you have to take a stand."

He went on to describe China as "a vast and withering rebuke to those who thought... that the triumph of capitalism must be accompanied by democratic pluralism."

He said he had come away from Beijing "a convinced Sinophile".

Johnson, a former Conservative MP who was elected London mayor in May, has been prone to gaffes and has in the past been forced to offer apologies to the city of Liverpool and Papua New Guinea for controversial comments.