Daily Mail - 04.03.2020

Daily Mail, Wednesday, March 4, 2020^ Page 13

By Vanessa Allen

‘Groovy’: The PM with Munira Mirza

Boudicca was a ‘proto-Brexiteer’,

Boris Johnson claimed yesterday in

naming the five women who most

shaped his life.

He said the British queen’s bravery in

taking on the Romans was an inspira-

tion, adding: ‘What a woman.’

Boudicca joins singer Kate Bush and cam-

paigner Malala Yousafzai in his top five.

Political aide Munira Mirza and his grand-

mother irene Williams complete the list.

Mr Johnson, 55, who announced his engage-

ment to his girlfriend carrie Symonds on

Saturday, said the Queen and Margaret

Thatcher only narrowly missed the cut for

his nominations to mark international Wom-

en’s day on Sunday.

He told Grazia magazine he had struggled

with the decision, but had chosen women

who had made a personal impact on him and

had ‘stirred my emotions’.

tHE FORMER cOMMunist

as a former member of the Revolutionary

communist Party, she might seem an

unlikely inspiration for a Tory prime minis-

ter. But Miss Mirza, 41, has become a key

member of Mr Johnson’s inner circle since

she first joined his team 12 years ago while

he was London mayor.

The daughter of Pakistani immigrants, she

grew up in oldham and went to a compre-

hensive before winning a place at oxford

university. Now head of the downing Street

policy unit, she was credited with helping to

shape the manifesto that won the conserva-

tives their majority at the last election.

Mr Johnson told Grazia magazine: ‘Munira

is capable of being hip, cool, groovy and gen-

erally on trend. She hates cant; she hates frip-

pery; she hates political correctness. She has,

‘Birdlike’:

Wuthering

Heights singer

Kate Bush

‘Shining’: Irene Williams ‘Spirit’: Queen Boudicca ‘Idealist’: Malala Yousafzai

all told, the most powerful non-

sense-detector i have ever seen.’

Music LEGEnD

Mr Johnson said that with Wuth-

ering Heights Kate Bush had writ-

ten ‘one of the world’s greatest

ever pop songs, part of the sound-

track of my adolescence’.

He added: ‘There are moments

when i simply can’t understand

what she is saying; moments she

is staccato, birdlike, and then

sometimes she produces a crash-

ing bow-wave of noise unlike any-

thing written before or since.’ it is

not known if Miss Bush, 61, returns

his admiration. She praised his

predecessor Theresa May, saying

she was ‘wonderful’ and ‘the best

thing that’s happened to us in a

long time’.

sunny GRAnny

descended from royalty, the Prime

Minister’s grandmother irene Wil-

liams lived on an Exmoor hill farm

with no central heating or mains

electricity. Known to Mr Johnson

and his family as ‘Granny Butter’,

she was related to King George ii

through her German great-grand-

mother, Karoline von Rottenburg.

She won a half-blue for judo while

studying at oxford and would use

a knife and fork even when eating

potato crisps.

Mr Johnson said: ‘There is a sim-

ple reason why my grandmother

ranks as a heroine of mine: her

sheer unconquerable optimism ...

for Granny Butter the sun was

always shining, or about to shine,

and everything was pretty well

marvellous.’

AnciEnt RuLER

The Prime Minister may have had

his own relationship with the Eu

in mind when he praised Boudic-

ca’s refusal to bow down in the

face of Roman aggression.

The British queen led a revolt

against Roman rule in the first cen-

tury, vowing to ‘win the battle or

perish’. The uprising failed and she

is thought to have killed herself. Mr

Johnson said: ‘What a woman.

The Romans have just beaten her

up, raped her daughters and

seized her kingdom. and what

does she do? She attacks. Boud-

icca was driven by a simple desire

for freedom. She was a Romano-

sceptic, a proto-Brexiteer ... who

can say her spirit is not alive in the

country today?’

tEEn ActiVist

Mr Johnson met Malala in 2014,

two years after she was shot in the

head by Taliban gunmen for speak-

ing out against a ban on girls

attending school in her native Paki-

stan. She was brought to Britain

for surgery and has since started a

global campaign for equal access

to education, and has won a Nobel

prize for her activism.

Mr Johnson said: ‘She was unlike

anyone i had met. She was so brave,

so right and so luminously idealis-

tic that i could see i was in the

presence of a modern-day saint.’

Mr Johnson added: ‘Her cam-

paign – for female education – is

the fastest and best way we could

change the world... men in suits:

listen to Malala.’

1 2

3 4 5

Why parrots’ decisions show they’re no bird brains

ParroTS can make decisions based on

probabilities, just like humans, research-

ers have found.

The kea, a species of large parrot found

in New Zealand, was able to make infer-

ences based on previous knowledge and

experience. They even performed better

than chimps in some experiments. The

researchers from the University of auck-

land trained six parrots to associate the

colour black with a treat and the colour

orange with no reward. In one experi-

ment coloured tokens were put in two

transparent jars and the birds then saw a

researcher take tokens from each jar and

hold one in each hand, without being able

to see which colour was in which hand.

In almost every instance, the kea chose

the hand that appeared most likely to

carry a black token.

Lead author amalia Bastos said: ‘Kea

look very intelligent and they behave

very intelligently. I just didn’t expect

them to perform quite well as chimpan-

zees do.’ She added: ‘We were [also] very

surprised to find that the kea can use

social cues even from humans to make

these judgments.’

The study was published in the journal

Nature Communications.

Daily Mail Reporter

Picture: sco

Pe features

BORIS: 5

WOMEN

WHO’VE

MADE ME

WHO I AM

He praises Kate Bush and

granny – but no mention

of 2 wives or carrie!