• Prime Minister Boris Johnson has four children, officially, plus one he fathered during an affair.
  • There might be a sixth one from another affair, but Johnson has neither confirmed nor denied that.
  • Today, live on LBC, Johnson was asked the question that the London media has been aching to put to him for months: “How many children do you have?”
  • He refused to answer.

If Boris Johnson becomes the UK’s new prime minister on December 12, he will re-enter No.10 Downing Street with an extraordinary fact missing from his biography: the number of children he has.

Officially, Johnson has four children with his ex-wife Marina Wheeler. Their names are Lara Lettice Johnson, Cassia Peaches Johnson, Theodore Apollo Johnson, and Milo Arthur Johnson. They are aged 20 to 26.

It is also a matter of public record that he fathered a fifth child, a daughter named Stephanie, in 2009 during an affair with Helen Macintyre, an art adviser.

And, as The Independent put it today, “he is also believed to have fathered another child outside of his marriage.”

That would make six children, of which only four have been officially acknowledged by Johnson. But possibly only five in total, if the rumours are false.

Unsurprisingly, the number of Johnson's children has become a topic of fascination among London's political media.

Today, Johnson was asked live on LBC radio, by presenter Nick Ferrari, "how many children do you have?"

Johnson replied, "I love my children very much but they are not standing at this election and I'm not therefore going to comment on them."

Johnson has historically refused to answer questions about his private life. But he opened himself up for Ferrari's question because he wrote a column in The Spectator some years ago in which he said that single mothers were "producing a generation of ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate children." (Since then at least one, and possibly two, of Johnson's children have been raised by single mothers.)

A caller to the station, "Ruth from Oldham," said Johnson was a hypocrite: "I am a single mother. I don't appreciate what you have said about single mothers, and by implication my family. Why are you happy to criticise people like me, when you refuse to discuss your family?"

Johnson declined to comment.

Watch the video here: