Johnson calling French ‘turds’ cut from BBC doco

Footage of Boris Johnson calling the French ‘turds’ was cut from BBC doco at Foreign Office’s request.

Boris Johnson at a shipyard on the Isle of Wight yesterday. Picture: AFP

Footage of British prime ministerial hopeful Boris Johnson calling the French “turds” over their Brexit stand was cut from a BBC documentary following a request from the Foreign Office, the Daily Mail reported yesterday.

The comments were made during Mr Johnson’s time as foreign minister, and were cut out of the fly-on-the-wall documentary Inside the Foreign Office. A Whitehall memo seen by the newspaper said the department asked for the footage to be cut, saying it would make Anglo-French relations “awkward” and make Brexit negotiations more difficult.

Mr Johnson resigned as foreign secretary in protest at Theresa May’s Brexit plan and is now the favourite to replace her.

“The production team made judgments about what was in the program and they are satisfied that the program achieves its ambitions and has the content they wanted,” a spokeswoman for the BBC told the newspaper.

AFP