When Healthy Hillingdon met Boris Johnson MP
Marmite comes to mind when you think of Boris Johnson, MP to Uxbridge and South Ruislip. People either love him or hate him. Whichever camp you are in, something can be said, he is certainly charismatic and charming when you met him.
Healthy Hillingdon sat down with Boris to talk about health in the borough and Olympic Legacy.
As a busy MP, journalist and father- how do you find the time to keep active and healthy?
I play all sorts of sports and run virtually every day but want to put a plug in for Hillingdon Hospital because I got a shard of glass in my foot and it was really impeding me and it turned out that it was pure Munchausen syndrome. There was nothing wrong with me at all really, but I went to see Hillingdon Hospital who took the glass out and bandaged me up and now I am skipping like a spring lamb. An absolute plug to the NHS who are fantastic.
We couldn’t agree more!
I am also aware that people don’t take enough exercise and I am certainly one of those at the moment. We really need to concentrate our efforts into getting the people of Britain moving again.
My daughter has just started school this year and I am quite upset that they only do one hour or physical education a week. Do you think that is enough?
No! Nothing like enough. I can tell you that when I was a kid, it may sound insane, but we did sport or games for about two hours every day and sometimes twice a day, in all weathers. Wind, rain, hail, sleet snow- cross country runs in pouring rain and good for us it was too. We had to fill in a chart every week to show how much physical activity we had taken to show we had done enough and someone would come and check it.
Did you encourage your children to take up sport?
Yes. I used to drive my kids all over London to various sports clubs like all parents. I think they all learnt to love sport. One of my children got to be quite good at cricket and football and was captain of his university football team and did get into Wisden (the only member of my family to do so!).
How did you feel after the Olympics? Did you feel that the legacy from it was as you wanted?
Yes. I think that the physical legacy is quiet astonishing. The sporting legacy is pretty good to, we came second in Rio and did even better in Rio than we did in London actually which was pretty outstanding. I don’t know what will happen in 2020.
We just came 4th in the World Cup which isn’t too bad with a very young side who did brilliantly. In my lifetime we had never won Wimbledon and then Andy Murry won twice, and we have very good players rising now.
We can be very proud of British sporting achievement at the moment, but it has to be there for everybody and we have to have more grassroots sport. It about getting kids to do it and making sure there are enough people to help them and volunteers to support them!
I want to thank Mr Johnson for his time. If you agree with his politics or not, I think we can all agree that children need to be more active (as we all do) and that we should be proud of British sporting achievements.
Perhaps my next interview should be with Rt Hon Jeremy Wright MP (Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) or the Rt Hon Damian Hinds (Secretary of State for Education). Perhaps we could discuss ways of opening up grass roots sport to more children and extending PE hours!!
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