Think back to those hazy pre-mayoral-voting days when you would gaze at loveable candidate Boris's mischievous face in your daily edition of the Evening Standard, and ruminate on his status as ‘one of us’, or 'man of the people'. Well, nostalgic friend, those days are over. Today's news reveals that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is not, as he would seem, just your average Tom, Dick or Harry. Johnson is the latest celebrity to......

This is the damning conclusion of an audit into the London Development Agency under Ken Livingstone. During his eight years in power, millions were squandered on pet projects, approved without appropriate checks and balances, says the report, which was authored by Patience Wheatcroft at the behest of her long-time pal and occasional back-scratcher Boris Johnson. Contentious projects, like a world-class aquarium in the Silvertown Quays complex, were given Ken's glad-hand and pushed ahead despite......

Kate Hoey, former Labour sports minister and controversial aide to our new Conservative mayor, has admitted that Boris is not certain where some fairly large and important things are. That in itself might not be much of a revelation, but according to her interview with the Metro he's not the only one searching behind the sofa: Some boroughs cannot even tell you what [sports] facilities they have...We haven't even got a proper absolute plan......

Londoners tired of their foppish Mayor may have an unlikely saviour come the 2012 elections: bombastic businessman Alan Sugar has suggested that he might stand as Labour Party candidate in the next mayoral election. The ex-Amstrad boss and East End barrow-boy would certainly make a tough figurehead for the city. Whether the ability to amass heaps of dosh and shout at hapless apprentices on TV equips one to run the nation’s capital city is......

May's mayoral election was criticised by psephological purists for being all style over substance: much of Boris' appeal lay in his ebullient media persona, honed by regular appearances on Have I Got News For You. If certain rumours are to be believed, then BBC television shows could be the new proving ground for mayoral candidates - Labour insiders are apparently considering Sir Alan Sugar as their man for the 2012 election. Labour want a......

It was just last week that Londonist speculated our new mayor might not be so enthused about the skyscrapers redrawing London's skyline as his predecessor was. Now we have confirmation from the blond-barnetted one himself: he is to demand tougher rules on high rise buildings. Johnson outlined his views on skyscraper requirements thus: "They should be buildings of quality, they should be buildings of distinction... I do think we should be protecting strategic views......

Boris Johnson has appointed Tim Parker as First Deputy Mayor and Chief Executive of the GLA. Mr Parker is also nominated as Chairman of Transport for London to succeed Boris - who has happily realised he perhaps shouldn't be keeping too many plates in the air - from September. Mr Parker has agreed not to receive a salary but will get a nominal one pound a year for his trouble. £1? Multi-millionaire or no,......

Tired of pottering about the garden, watching daytime telly and staring folornly at City Hall, Ken Livingstone has found himself a retirement job: hosting a phone-in on London's LBC 97.3 radio. Like a Frasier for London, Ken will apply his knowledge of the City gleaned from many years in office to debate with, educate and probably rant at callers to the show. How London's cabbies (who seem to have LBC hard-wired into their radios)......

We can't help but be impressed by Boris Johnson's bid to deliver as many of his manifesto pledges as possible in his Mayoral settling in stage. First the tube booze ban, then scrapping The Londoner. Today he's announcing an extra 440 police staff on the buses - his headline promise on transport. Safer Transport Teams were launched in 2005 and in March last year Ken Livingstone stumped up for an additional 400 PCSOs to......

One of the few things we can be sure of about the mayoral race is that Boris and Ken in particular are knackered. But with just three full campaigning days remaining they must now run harder than ever. If the opinion polls are telling us anything, it is that neither can be certain which of them will win and that every single vote–first or second preference–is precious to them. Livingstone’s strategy between now and......

Has the final wheel come off Boris Johnson’s 'New Routemaster' policy? The good thing about it was that it came with a promise to restore conductors to the routes currently served by the bendy buses Johnson wants to replace: a bus with a conductor is a friendlier bus, a friendlier bus is a safer bus and so on. Problem is, Johnson has no grip on the economics of the plan, even weeks after he first......

Does anyone know who’s winning? On Monday, according to YouGov, it was Boris Johnson by a massive 13 points. But on Wednesday, according to Ipsos-MORI, it was Ken Livingstone by one, prompting The London Paper to dub him 'Comeback Ken'. So, is Ken coming back or is he a goner? Londonist is as baffled as everyone else but maybe the past week contained some clues about which way the tide is going. On Tuesday,......

Ah, Brian Paddick. He's almost as much of a media figure as Boris Johnson, which is pretty well why the Lib Dems opted for him as their challenger to the court of Ken (as we noted at the time). This Londonista even remembers sharing the same South London air with the erstwhile police commander during his softly softly stint in policing the mean streets of Lambeth (our notional file on him recalls his Paul......

The Blond is immortalised in song, courtesy of MankiniMan.......

ULU hustings shot courtesy of lewishamdreamer's Flickrstream The shape of the remainder of the mayoral race came into sharper focus last week thanks to one conspicuous absence, one opinion poll and three supposedly “secret” children. The absence was Boris Johnson’s from Time Out’s hustings at ULU on Wednesday, which Ken Livingstone, Sian Berry and Brian Paddick all attended. Why did The Blond not appear? That depends on whom you talk to. Time Out complained that......

Having previously interviewed Sian Berry, the standard-bearer for the Greens now currently in a pact (electoral, not economic or suicide we assume) with Labour's Ken Livingstone, Londonist sent a set of common questions out to (most of) the other candidates in the May 1st mayoral election. First up is Gerard Batten, standing for the UK Independence Party, who doubles up as one of the capital's representatives in the European Parliament (the existential considerations of......

And they’re off! The runners and riders have bolted from their stables and the London mayoral race is now officially underway. Braced to face scabrous attack of their respective transport and environmental policies, and the bleatings of Madonna, betting on the field continues to swing away from Ken to Boris, with the Lib Dems’ Brian Paddick barely out the paddock. No mere Boris v Ken affair, the full line-up boasts 10 candidates, all contending......

Those pesky OAPs just keep getting into trouble. This time it's drug smuggling Artists take stand against Shoreditch high rises Tube film upsets train drivers. Well it doesn't take much Bozza waves treehugging card While TfL send Congestion Charge payer 3000 receipts "Urban Chameleon" image courtesy of urban:zoo by [windscreen fly] via the Londonist flickr group.......

It's still difficult to tell how the mayoral race is going - where are all the opinion polls? But there's no doubt that, in the past week, the Livingstone campaign has made a huge effort to get its show on the road. The launch of his transport manifesto at Stratford station on Monday was designed to invite the most damning of comparisons between the present mayor's apparent grasp of the scale and complexity of......

Here’s what we’ve learned while you’ve been battening down your hatches and bringing the cattle in: In the weekend crime round-up…police were rather cross to be shot at on Friday, while there was an unseemly brawl outside Claire’s Accessories (we blame the pink feather boas). And in the wannabe-crime round-up, meet the bunny burglar who managed to cage himself. Shiny new terminal, shiny new security measures: there will be fingerprinting for all at T5.......

The clearest thing to emerge from the mayoral race this week is that no one can agree about buses. The arguments began last Wednesday when Boris Johnson told Vanessa Feltz that the '21st Century' Routemasters he wants to replace bendy buses with would all have conductors and that these would cost 'eight million quid'. Ken Livingstone went on the show next day to say Boris’s figures were fine except he’d left a nought off......

Our environmentally sustainable Mayor is taking on the IOC bigwigs who are demanding VIP fast lanes for a fleet of up to 3000 cars "to take officials, politicians and corporate sponsors to venues" at the 2012 Games. No fool he, cunningly waiting until they'd finished their progress inspection and given a favourable verdict earlier this week. He's not diving headlong into a fight though, preferring to wait until the Beijing Olympics are over this......

If we were Mayor, we'd order more bendybuses, not fewer as Boris would like. But why settle for just one concertina point? We'd fuse together all remaining double-deckers into a superomnibendysnake to convey tourists about town. All aboard! Please let us know what you'd do if you were Mayor via the medium of Photoshop. Send all entries to londonist - at - gmail - dot - com and we'll sort out some kind of......

We've all done it. Sat in the pub, arguing about the merits of the mayoral candidates and perhaps, journos aside, thought, "if only they were all a bit more down-to-earth, a bit more normal, more like you and me..." Well, here's a solution. www.londonelectsYOU.co.uk gives everyone the chance to put themselves forward as an independent candidate. Yes, even you.* Or that ambitious, politically savvy mate of yours who you think would actually do a......

Just the tonic we needed after walking to work on a cold, blustery March morn: Richard Branson is mulling over introducing a direct service between London and Kerala. Pressed during a holiday to the south Indian region about whether a connecting flight is on the cards, the Virgin Atlantic boss offered this gnomic reply: "It could be, but there is no immediate plan". Okay, it's hardly a ringing endorsement, but it has got Londonist......

All I do each night is pray...hoping that I'll be electable again some day. The highlight of the mayoral election week came at the Evening Standard’s Influentials Debate at the RSA on Monday, when Ken Livingstone told LBC breakfast host Nick Ferrari why he doesn’t drive. He revealed that he’d tried cars when a young man because he’d thought it would help him to get girls, but in the end had decided to “concentrate on......

As much-loved venues like the Spitz and Hammersmith Palais closed their doors forever last year, we began to worry that the small gig would one day become an endangered species. One of our favourite things to do in this great city is to pack into a tiny, sweaty club and damage our hearing as much as possible before last orders. Without that in our lives... well, we'd probably be loads more productive with our......

At first glance, this looks like a rather pleasant alternative to the Millennium Bridge - a verdant, undulating span like nothing else in London. But look at what's written along the side and you may feel your gorge begin to rise. The Diana Memorial Bridge is one of dozens of abandoned London schemes in a long-running thread on skyscrapercity forums. These include an X-rated erotic gherkin, a bulbous colander for Trafalgar Square and, our......

Time Out gave us a plug yesterday, so it's only fair we return the favour (cos they're, like, a tiny, struggling outfit who need a bit of profile raising). Editor-at-Large Michael Hodges is standing for Mayor. Hate him or loathe him, the bespectacled columnist certainly lives London in a way the other candidates do not. His weekly adventures take him to every corner of town, where he orders a drink, dispenses an insult and......

Ken Livingstone's on a tap water crusade. Him and Thames Water have launched a campaign to encourage Londoners to be proud to ask for tap water, however many grannies it's been through. Not only are they extolling the quality of the water and the clear financial benefits, they're trying to make it sexy by running a competition to design a carafe worthy of holding our precious Eau de Londres. Asking for tap water in......